He is very calm and rational about his talks what I seen so far. I think the crazy talks where he isn't calm are the ones that will be cut down to the crazy part and shared most. Because those are the parts that generate traffic.
In general, particularly now, he seems to be respectful in person but honest. He almost always seems to admit his own limitations to the point of self-denegration many times, even calling himself "a really unpleasant person" and "I'm not a visionary" and "I'm not technical", and ends discussion of his points by saying things like, "but that's just me and other people are different," and even things like, "those differences have turned out to be a good thing for Linux." He may have calmed down with age, of course, as well. He even says that those times he makes very harsh comments are obviously hyperbole and it just comes with passion. I personally don't agree with using those comments but I agree with the point about respect needing to be earned and not immediately given (in the realm of the technical; I think all people deserve respect, empathy, etc. outside of that (which is why I would probably be more tactful myself, but also why I can empathesize with him saying those comments; it's a different vernacular, and as he says, you find the people with whom you want to work and part of that is sharing that perspective and vernacular).) I mean, even with regards to the infamous "Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate," says he holds no hostility towards Tanenbaum. I think overall, even though he says he is not a "people person," he actually shows quite a bit of empathy without compromising his own values. I have seen him a little more aggressive, saying things like "F*** NVIDIA" and such. But again, I think that's just part of how he talks. He deals in the abstract of ideas for the most part (not that I'm "inside his brain," but it seems he is not thinking of the people he is hurling the insults towards as "people," (and we all objectivify each other and ourselves to a large degree in any domain; we're too complex to think about everything) but rather sources of ideas, perhaps), recognizes that he isn't always tactful (although often is), and is passionate.
@@math3matics I agree with what you are saying. I also don't think he ever was really 'hostile'. I just think if you look at the history of Linux it's in essence a hobby project which gained A LOT of traction. I think it's like with a lot of other stuff like python, perl or php for example. The people who started them did not do so with the thought of widespread implementation. A lot were and still are just people with technical knowledge who tried to solve a problem they had. And just because a person has expertise in one field does by no means mean that they are some kind of genius. And a lot of people might just underestimate how hard good communication is. So I think Linus shouldn't be seen as some kind of bad spokesperson or something. I think he is more so a passionate programmer who happens to be demanded to speech in public. But even if I think that the public image is always sensationalised... I feel like he has really calmed down a bit over the years. If you look at the mailing lists and stuff like that as well.
@@thingsiplay Actually, from what I've seen, I believe that when he lashes out he has exhausted all his patience already. It's when he has to deal with persistent stupidity. Everybody is sometimes stupid, but some people are consistently stupid, at least in some regards. It's such people which he lashes out at. Even then, even if the package is annoying or even offensive, the content is meaningful and thought through. IMO.
"strong opinions" ^^ One might not be on the same side as Linus but I really like that he can (and always does) give you logical arguments for his strong opinions :)
+wullxz without a doubt. I'm not exactly a Linus fan (I actually think he's a total dick), but I can absolutely not argue with his logic. He does have logical and understandable points for all his opinions and I respect him for saying them out loud and as a programmer.
The problem with Linus is having opinions about topics he is absolutely an idiot in. Legally speaking the lack of consequences in GPLv2, leads to a situation where it is relatively hard to get a judge to order an injuction (because the licence doesn't contain the right to injunction). When the licence include a injunction-on-violation clause, it's a LOT easier to get a judge to grant your injunction, because it's the automatic legal consequence all parties agreed to. The lack of formal consequences on violation, is a flaw in GPLv2. Not a feature. But Linus has more legally flawed interprentation of the law and licences: - He thinks the GPL allows him to open up certain hooks into the kernel to other (non-gpl) (combined)modules. It doesn't. (even though I do agree it should) - He thinks the GPL allows him to use in-code declaration to open up certain kernel "hooks" to non-gpl modules, but prevent the use of others. It doesn't. (even if the GPL allowed the first bulletin, it still doesn't allow adding additional restrictions byond GPL, which he would be doing here) Simply put: GPLv2 is a VERY BAD licence to use for libraries and kernels specifically. No sane legal professional would advice anyone to use GPL(v2) for use in Kernels and Libraries. What he is doing here is presenting his own incompetence in legal maters as "features". Which he shouldn't, simply because he educates people and he doesn't have the knowhow to do so.
That's not a fair argument as that's not what "versioning" implies. Versioning explicitly implies "this version is equivalent to the previous but newer an improved" or the older version is "outdated and superceded" If it has a different purpose it should have a different name.
@@justincameron9123 Well I doubt you'll find a definition for "explicitly implied" as it's an oxymoron in the first place (as Lord Valen pointed out): something is either explicit or implied. However, removing the verbiage used point (and I'm pretty sure you meant the definition of "version," anyway), what is the point of versioning if it is not what Anonymous Person stated? Would it really make sense to create an entity B, something completely different in many ways to Entity A, and call it Entity Av2? Something doesn't need to be in the dictionary to be true, as well. However, the most pertinent definition of "version" I found (readily available by the way; it took me 5 seconds to find) was a sub-definition pertaining to software and it says, "a particular release of a piece of computer software" with the main definition being, "a particular form of something differing in certain respects from an earlier form or other forms of the same type of thing." This is vague enough to say things like "it's a license so it's in the same category" or something like that, but, philosophically, I think it's quite clear it's implying it's a continuation of the same entity (and thus would have the same functionality or same principles). Versioning would be a mess otherwise, for which I'll cite my previous, contrived example of entity B being called Entity Av2 when it's completely different.
I know it's late but I can't help but watch this from time to time and Linus really is legendary. I like his "roughness" tbh. Sometimes it is a bit offensive true, but such is life, you gotta be able to take hard critique and get back up, unfortunately. And sometimes such rough talk is a good slap to the face so you wake up.
Why unfortunately? Absolutely nothing gets done if everyone is a fraudulent nice guy. Why fraudulent, because five minutes later they invariably try to socially pressure you to do their bidding without admitting that's exactly what they are trying to do.
I truly respect him for that. He is honest and doesnt hold back about his feelings and views. I actually find it quite normal and how it should be done. I have the feeling while americans are more confused by it, europeans get it a bit more. (I'm german for example) ... But that's just a guess.
Nothing's late with on demand video! But I (believe I) completely agree with you, and would even say he's not even really that "rough" (and I like that you put it in quotes). When people say that he is "tactless" or "rough" or whatever, to me it's just a set of valid principles (respect needing to be earned, etc.) and a vernacular that is not meant to be taken literally ("how are you still alive being that stupid," etc.). He actually is quite tactful, IMO, without comprising his values. For instance, in this video, he is very polite to the person who asked the question but stated his opinion honestly, and then ended with, "but that's just me". He even said that GPLv3 is a fine license, it's just not GPL and thus shouldn't be called v3 of it. He'll even admit his weaknesses often (I believe even saying he would die on an island if he had to write a good looking GUI) and also say that it's good to have multiple perspectives working on a project (although I believe that's in another video or interview, one in which he talks about how he changed his perspective on involving others and matured, thus admitting he had a poor perspective before, etc.). He may appear tactless in text based communications (mailing lists and forums and such) but it's always hard to judge tone and in those forums, without a physical person there, you're more in the realm of abstract ideas. I may not use the same rhetoric as him but I am completely empathetic to it.
@@RiversJ That's a great point. Most people who want to get things done but also be nice will end up just trying to manipulate you via that kindness, which is very deceptive and, I would consider, even worse from a morality perspective than being "harsh" or "tactless" or however people want to label Linus.
GPLv2 seems the best license. I've noticed with more liberal licenses like BSD, MIT, etc, is that companies then make proprietary versions and don't contribute all code back. So for example PostgreSQL has companies that contribute to the open source version, but also sell their proprietary versions with extensions that they keep closed. If Linus had gone with a BSD type license you'd have proprietary versions of Linux with, say, custom and closed source file systems. GPLv2 means everything is open sourced.
GPLv3 is better, because it prevents Tivoization & hardware DRM that affects the software. GPL is about guaranteeing & spreading end-user freedom/liberty, not necessarily developers getting their code back which is just a byproduct.
I don’t think your last point is entirely correct. As far as I understand the license, only the kernel would be covered by the “copyleft” clauses, not user space. So any changes to kernel code must be made open, but that wouldn’t prevent a company from making a distribution with a number of essential user space components published as closed source. I mean isn’t this what Android does by making essential libraries closed source? That’s why Replicant basically had to reimplement most of the standard libraries and other essential components in their free version of Android.
@@phillafco1039 Yes but even the kernel gets forked and made proprietary with a liberal license. GPL ensures there's a single community coding the same codebase.
"Im sure some of them are good people, but most of the people they are sending are murders and rapists and we have to secure our community. We have to build a firewall." -Linus Torvalds
Freedom has (or should always have) limits. Does Linus take these limits in account? (that's a real question - I've stopped listening to him a long time ago)
Well also, one you accepted a bunch of patches for your own OpenSource project, you can't change your choice either (unless you get all submitters you got changes from agree with your change of choice)
I suppose he's allowed to ask a new question only when there's nobody else to ask questions, because the talk still has time and it's better to have a question than not lol
@@RiversJ "arrogance is being presumptuous or obnoxious while your conjecture Is correct/superior" where do you get these definitions? "while your conjecture Is correct/superior" it has nothing to do with that, arrogance is a behavior attribute, has nothing to do with being right or wrong.
Tivoisation is also a problem with nearly all tablet computers and “smartphones” and even some laptops. It’s impossible for the user to replace Android or iOS on these devices with something else, like some regular GNU/Linux distro. Thus development of free software for these devices is stalled. And maybe even at some point, you won’t be able to buy a normal computer anymore, one that isn’t locked down. It’s a dystopian development.
He seems to agree with that. His point is that shouldn't be up to the owners of the software to decide. His idea is "I make open source software, anyone can use it". He doesn't want to add caveats or conditions to using the software. The only condition he has is to publicise any improvements you make.
@@qutuz9495 Yup. That's what I got from the video as well. I do rather get his point - even though the free software on the device now can't be freely developed anymore, it doesn't stop his base intent with free software: That anyone can use the software & if they do they must submit the patches back. The fact that the hardware isn't free doesn't change the "freeness" of the software - the code is still available for people to put into their own hardware if they want.
@@qutuz9495 He also cares much more about the rights of the developers than the users. Which makes sense, he's sunk a lot of his life into a handful of software projects and wants to protect and enable the developers of those. Why does he care whether you can modify your Tivo?
@@9001greg You do ought to provide evidence for how/why GPLv3 is “communist”, even if the text of the GPLv3 itself is readily available. (Or even how/why communism is a bad thing or an antithesis to freedom, as it seems like you believe it is.) My understanding of communism (as a non‐communist) does not align with your view/statement, so I would like to see your sources for why you believe this to be the case.
that remains the fundamental agreement, except gpl3 recognizes the reality that a permissive license on its own does not guarantee that source code is free to use, a fact which companies like microsoft are eager to exploit to enclose the commons
Wow, it is amazing how a community changes with time and generation. I think the comments section should just be 'Let's bag Linus'. Self entitled idealism. It's not wrong to want to change the world, but someone with a differing opinion than yours is not automatically a lesser being. Society has somehow changed from discussing differing opinions and debate as a good thing and turned it into a skewering by popularity. Breaks the heart to watch. Especially when you can tell some of the intellectual dishonesty taking place along the way. What a waste. Watch the whole video - the guy adamantly expresses these are his opinions and that he sees the benefits of other options.
The problem is, there can be only so much "differing opinions and debate" if you wish to get anything done. When in a common effort, you have to share the effort's goals to be able to and have the motivation to contribute productively. So, the more people share a project's goals and/or vision, the more current and potential contributors that project has. Which is FOSS world is everything -- that's where "popularity" of ideas comes to play.
It may make more sense to you when you factor in the vast commercial market, which contributes the largest volume of quality code back to the project. Don't get too hung up on free as in beer - v3 restricts what should and so far always has been free. At some point the FSF needs to understand and acknowledge that their position is wrong, so those of us whose livelihoods (producing free software) depend on licenses to allow us to do what we do. The motivation to contribute productively is some times, ok let's be real, in most cases today, is money/paycheck. There is nothing wrong with this but the FSF seems to think that there is, and they are just wrong. The license wars were theirs to lose... and incredibly, they did that. Self-righteous hubris is never a good thing, I don't know how they expected the whole world to join them in that direction.
In my opinion everyone is entitled to their own view. Impracticality SHOULD NOT be able to change that, so 'there can be only so much "differing opinions and debate"' to me is an extremely dangerous way of thinking. Sacrificing human rights for practicality....That is wrong on soo many levels. That sometimes we choose things by majority to get things done does not mean that there can only be soo much differeing opinions and debate and it certainly does not mean that other opinions (outside of the soo much box) do not count, which your statement I quoted earlier implies. I really hope you only meant to say that we sometimes need to make decision that does not match some peoples view instead of saying there can only be soo much... because that last idea gives me chills to the bone. And I know I am kinda contradicting my own point of free visions. But Denying other people their human right to me is the only opinion no one should have. Would make the world a much better place.
If Minix was GPL v3 instead of BSD, maybe the Intel IME and the AMD PSP fiascos wouldn't be what they are right now..? Even more likely, perhaps if Linux was GPL v3 instead of v2, Android phones would be a lot easier to flash. My last two phones have no drivers available, so I'm stuck with the vendor version. If I want it to have more than 2 hours battery, have a functional touchscreen, sensors and GPS, or even work as a phone, that is. Otherwise, I can painstakingly change the OS, and have a tiny PDA without keys, if I manage not to brick it in the process, yay!
Plus it was impractically impossible to get all the developers to agree to v3. In fact the FSF screwed the pooch on v3, the industry weight switched behind BSD style licences leading to embrace, extend and don't share the code back.
Additionally if you're a commercial company, you don't want the software you build a product on to be subject to license changes imposing new conditions. Especially by a small organisation with opaque governance.
The main difference is that for Linus FSF is just a tool for making big and complex software development available for a common programming enthusiast or a small company, to make real programming more accessible to people and to use their efforts for making it even more accessible in the future. Just because programming is fun and big programming is even more fun. But for FSF all the software including Linux kernel itself is not so important bu itself, for them it is just an example for how things should be done overall, it is just a just a tool for moving torwards their political goals, to their bright ideals of global information freedom. Linus just does not care about the big picture, he cares much more about what he personally can create and what would benefit other people like him. He is a professional not a politician and he does not want to expose his projects to new risks just for the sake of some dreams. And who knows if it is a right decision or not but it is absolutely an understandable one.
Linus' way worked, compare Linux to GNU Hurd. Linus' pragmatic approach that doesn't hate all companies allows Linux to be the kernel for mobiles and servers. Otherwise it would be a tiny niche noone cares about.
As long as GPLv2 allows Linus to do what he needs to keep developing the Linux kernel I am fine with it. The only way he'll ever move on to say GPLv3 or onwards is if a loophole in GPLv2 stops him from developing the Linux kernel... Adding more lines of legal insanity to the mother load of text that is the GPL license these days ain't going to drive up insensitive to invest into open source. Its why licenses like the BSD license grew so popular among corporate entities, people who use your code want as little restrictions posed on them specifically as possible.
Linus can't change the license of the kernel anymore either. Unless each and everyone having provided patches for it agrees with the change. The kernel is locked into GPLv2 for good. If there happens to be a loophole in future then Linus dug the grave by disallowing followup licenses as replacement.
Well, BSD licence etc is popular with corporate entities because they want to use and make money with other people's work without giving back any of their own work. At the end of the day a company is a company: "I have something you don't have and you have to pay me lots of money to be allowed to use it." That doesn't work if they give that something back.
@@georgelionon9050 A key feature of humanity is that ideologies decay. Corruption corrupts, money monetizes, and usurpers usurp. Loopholes don't even need to be real for a sufficiently large cadre of lawyers to poke holes in any document. So, why make it even easier by letting them change the document itself? Someday, what you posit will happen. But some of the largest corporations - and governments - on this entire planet use Linux. _They have more lawyers._
@@georgelionon9050 Actually, he can. The entire Kernel is not GPLv2, and Linus has proprietary rights to some of it, copyrights, trademarks that are all his, and it's not like if he went with a better more agreeable license, he'd be alone on it. So if he changes the license on his code, that in no way means it changes anyone else's who contributed, but by contributing they made their work FOSS, and the Kernel team could technically do what Google did to Linux in making Android. If he goes with a different license, and requires contributors to adopt the new license for every new code, over time it will replace all of the old GPL stuff.
Use GPLv3 for: - Software - Plugins - Add-Ons Use LGPLv3 for: - Libraries - Add-Ons (if is like library) Use MIT, BSD, Apache, CC0 for: - Small code - Medium & Below medium sized libraries - Tutorials - Templates
@@powerfulaura5166 Ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. I release my source code under the MIT license because it's less restrictive, and a lot of companies won't let you use GPL'd software (somehow they ignore g++). I don't really blame them. As a dev, I hate the GPL on libraries. According to GNU themselves: using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs. This is deliberate on their part. They're trying to make an advantage for free developers over devs that are actually paid to produce software. I'm more than happy to use GPL'd tools (like g++ and gnu make), but I won't use GPL'd libraries. I won't even take the time to decide if they're useful, even for my open-source projects, because I don't want to spend time learning a library that I can't use for my day job. Furthermore, I hate how the GPL acts like a virus. Pull in a GPL'd library, and now your entire project has to be GPL'd. It doesn't matter if you prefer another license. But as for my end users -- my end users are other developers. And I'm giving them MORE freedom than the GPL does. I'm not out there trying to advance the GNU manifesto. Frankly, I don't agree with it. If you do, that's great. GPL everything you like. But I'm giving my users more freedom than you are.
There is a 3-clause (the original one) and a 2-clause license (the "fixed" one). The third clause required a mention of the author in all products using the software. While this was sensible long ago ("pay by honoring") in practice with modern GNU/Linux systems where there is a huge amount of different software projects incorporated it becomes quite unpractical, that is "non-usable". Personally I like the MIT(Expat) license more, because it's written in a more modern way, but 2-clause BSD is fine too. (PS: What I mean by more modern, the license is written in a way, that first sentence it takes everything away from you, and then explicitly gives you each freedom right to use, right to copy, right to modify, etc. It's more future safe in a sense if there are things we can't think of yet)
@@georgelionon9050 , I think, you are talking about 4-clause BSD. 3-clause BSD doesn't have a requirement of mentions. Also, 3-clause BSD is still used by such companies as Google.
I still don't get which one he's talking about? BSD and MIT are all permissive and not copyleft, I don't see how that'd fly in his book.What am I missing? Or is this like an "OK" license that he wouldn't use but if it must be permissive that's what he'd suggest? I do see how the ISC license once fixed the BSD-2 lic with it saying "and" so that it requires all those things vs the usual BSD way of leaving crucial parts out, but it was updated in 07 and says and/or again so I'm... lost as to what he's saying.
He speaks his mind and people don't like that. He also just gets on with it and doesn't care really who he offends along the way. I have great admiration for him as a developer.
I recently saw videos with him and I was suprised to see Linus is a twat and unnecessary rude, and I will explain why. So people can understand, being upfront/direct is very good, but unnecessary insulting and putting down people is a bad thing, and only a moron does that, and Linus did that on more occasions. And is not about being soy-boy like some asskissing fans say here, it's about self-respect and not accepting a person to talk so rude to you like saying "you should be retroactively aborted", Linus is truly a disgusting person with unnecessary insults like this. Also professional achievements are not an excuse to personal bad behaviour.
GPLv2 is mostly about copyright - you're allowed to use, change, and redistribute the software you got. GPLv3 adds some gnarly anti-patent stuff, allowing anyone to come after companies who distribute GPLv3 software, if they have any patents - even patents that have nothing to do with the software.
@@senseisecurityschool9337 Isn't it the opposite? As far as I understand this, if the company distributes the code under GPLv3, it cannot sue anyone using this code in any way, even if the code (or a portion of it) is covered by company's patents. fsfe.org/activities/gplv3/patents-and-gplv3.en.html#Explicit-patent-grant
@@konstantincanaglia4089 Right, if a company mirrors any GPLv3 software, all patents owned by the company, including totally unrelated divisions of the company, are threatened. Anyone can just commit some random module that uses their patent, and because some dev somewhere in the company mirrored the git repo, the company loses the ability to enforce the patent.
medical equipment should not have locked down software running on them. Policy makers don't understand the implications of locked down hardware and walled gardens, vendor lockins, and waste of public money going that route
well opensource is a double edged sword if you have software that is scarecly examined for bugs then opensource is more of a security issue then benefit and i think that is why medical equipment and its software is locked down
how about electric meters, or ATMs, or credit-card terminals or other security devices? the day that companies are not allowed to harden their devices against attack when running linux is the day that they stop running linux.
@@Spongman Security through obscurity is hardly security. Having things be open source means that they can be checked to make sure the code has secure protocols. The code that you use is not the data that you use (which is what the code should be able to protect). When you don’t make your code open source, and you give that locked-down hardware to another company, you aren’t going to face more than the slap on the wrist that the credit rating agencies got hit with for releasing hundreds of millions of personally identifying information via channels which only they were able to see the code for! The incentives to have secure code simply don’t exist for code that is not open source.
@@evannibbe9375 " Security through obscurity is hardly security. " People say that, but in practice you look at e.g. some commonplace symmetric-key crypto algorithm like AES-256 and you see just how easy it is to inadvertently insert backdoors into it to the point where you need quite a bit of expertise just to roll some canned version of the thing without ending up vulnerable to a padding oracle attack or the like. If you rolled your own shitty homebrew algorithm you'd be SOL if someone managed to figure it out and find an attack but you're still probably better off with that than with a substandard implementation of something well-known. There's a lot of nuance in the discussion that's completely steamrolled by adages like "security through obscurity is no security at all".
I really love how absolutely hostile the asker is in this clip, and how Linus tries to explain his licensing for HIS OWN software... That gentleman is always welcome to write his own Unix-like, BSD-like Kernel, garner piles of support, bring developers together and create his own system licensed the way he pleases...
You call a respectful disagreement "absolutely hostile"? He did not demand Linus explain anything. He just respectfully asked. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Torvalds nor with respectfully asking him critical questions. I actually like his questions, because now Torvalds got a chance to defend his choice and make others like me understand the reasoning behind it. He did not have to defend it, but since his choice does have an influence on us it is nice of him to do so anyway and good of people to ask.
stop doing substances, he made a humongous contribution to humanity, but your comment is off like you where aiming to Mars from Atlantic ocean, you ended up in the Pacific and getting to Alpha centauri... Yes I had to exaggerate
Hard disagree with Linus here. The social contract he points to is, and has always been, based on the 4 freedoms that define "Free software". The second freedom, "Freedom 1" (counting starts at 0), states that recipients of your software are allowed to make modifications and _run their modified versions._ Tivoization violates this freedom by preventing the recipients to _run_ their modified versions. What's preventing a company employing Tivoization from giving me access to a version of the source code that appears benign, while the real application has nefarious code in it that I'm not aware of? Nothing, because since I can not run the software, not even an unmodified version I compiled myself, I can not inspect that the compiled application does indeed do exactly what the source code I've been given would suggest. If I can not inspect the code that runs on my devices, I can not trust it either. Linus states that as long as he gets access to your modifications, he's good. But this is not a right granted under the GPL, not even under v2. In fact, nobody is under any obligation to contribute their patches back to him. Only the recipients of the modified software are entitled to the modified source code. They are then free to share the modified source code with the general public, or with specific people of their choosing, including with the author directly. But they are _under no obligation_ to do so, and unless the author is himself a recipient of the modified software, _he is in no way, shape or form entitled to the modified source code._ The GPL is not intended to benefit the original author of the source code; it's intended to benefit _its users._
Your final line here hits the nail on the head. Linus is within his rights to hold this opinion, but I think he is missing the forest for the trees by focusing on the software author over the software users.
@@viheriaruikkusenpai1158 of course you cannot make a derivative of GPL software and make it proprietary (because GPL disallows it). What I mean is that, as long as you abide by the licenses of the pieces of code you're using, you can license it in whatever way you want, and FSF should stop being so bigoted about that.
I know micro$oft is shady as shit, seeing they steal, but they also are able to gather copy-pasted ideas into very stable development environments. I'll give them that. Problem is now micro$oft is trying to take over open source software (seeing how they adamantly negated any GNU GPL v2, and they ended up acquiring GNU GPL v3), I wouldn't be impressed if they found a way to find something in GPL v3 they'd "suddenly love it". The difference between those is that (GPL v3) involved IPs inherit the "viral" clause from the GPL v2 + original IP patents rights are kept by the owner, so if indirectly "upgrading" GPL v3, and some IP from other licenses that may belong to original owner, enforces the license disagreement through any agreeable terms in the scope on GPL v3 but NOT the owner license scope(ding ding, microsoft), their IP has the right to do so, and the GPL v3 won't be in effect unless you: either *(1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so available*, or *(2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this particular work*, or *(3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients* Since Micro$oft won't hesitate to send to court anyone that may they find a risk, they will scrap the 3) inmediately or "conform an agreement, where your software would have to give up on any GPL v3 extension that may extend from theirs", the 1)also, since they rely on Windows Kernel as a base for everything, and that is not open source. No doubt they are already open sourcing parts that rely on closed source code. So the coverage is only for the open source part, specifically a software license (entirely different from an IP or trademark), but not their original license part that belongs to them. Also, there is a clause in GPL v3 that prevents you from using/transporting GPL v3 code from a third party, if you already have an agreement with another third party. Unless the third party is the same, or both third parties agreed to, and you are included. (ie, you work at AMD, want to use patches from Windows, but then want to relicense these changes). You'd need AMD and Micro$oft to agree a relicense, where you, the coder are using their GPL v3 .
So: If you have no desire to support GPL v3: use GPL v2 only . If you upgraded to GPL v3 please use GPL v2 or later license. That way they can adjust to your GPL v2 license and they are obligued to work on GPL v3. You then can say your code is GPL v2 and GPL v3 compatible, but still GPL v2, since GPL v2 and GPL v3 clauses are non-compatible. Making it "read-only source code" or protecting your work if external licenses are voided and your work is fully compliant with their GPL v3 parts
I admire this guy since I was young and installed Linux 0.99 from a new thingy called distro - Soft Landing Software! :) I don't really necessarily agree with everything he says, but I respect him by saying it - it made be to think, and by thinking, I could put my own convictions in check and get rid of the wrong ones. A agree with him about the GPLv3 - I'm still using GPLv2 due these reasons. A also agree that sometimes FSF goes borderline and somewhat bigotry. But I also agree that they have reasons for doing that (not all disclosable at that time), and also acknowledge that people make mistakes now and then - and this is the reason I do not fully agree with Linus about his feelings about FSF. When fighting monsters, you need to care to do not become one too - and I'm pretty sure that now and them, as any other Human Being, people at FSF crossed that line a bit. I know I did. It's interesting to note that less than 2 years ago, RMS was caught in a PR trap and had to resign from his position on the FSF due public pressure - a pretty low blow did probably by some Billionaire from the Software Industry in reprisal of a talk RMS did on his former Company - that thing happening 1 week after the talk is too much of a smoking gun to be ignored (but also so much of a smoking gun that it can had be used to hit that same billionaire, so i choose to avoid naming him). Linus himself was also targeted once, and had to be alway from the Kernel for some months. Given the current state of affairs, it's understandable a lot of not exactly nice things FSF did in the past. And it's due these reasons I also respected these guys a lot (and do my best to be not on their bad side, by Turing's sake, you can bet you ass I play straight on everything related to GPL!!)
Was it really that hard to agree with him on something? I find myself agreeing with Linus on almost all topics, *except* for the way he sometimes expresses himself.
Вообще-то GPL3 только прикрывает лазейки, при помощи которых обходят GPL2. По изначальному замыслу, авторы GPL2 не хотели давать такие лазейки (патенты, заблокированный загрузчик), просто тогда они не знали, что так будет. У них для более мягких ограничений есть LGPL, для более жёстких - Affero.
Honestly, GPLv3 is bad. It just turns people away from your project like Apple dropped Bash because of GPLv3. People don't want to deal with the extra restrictions that are not even that important. Why would you care about someone locking your software via hardware? What are the chances of this happening and if it does do you really care?
@@Tetex It only turns people away from my project that I couldnt care less about. It they cant even bother to let users use my code however they want, why would i bother letting them do so? GPLv3 ensures maximum freedom for everyone.
*GPLv3's DRM clause isn't a restriction on any freedom*. It grants more freedom, it doesnt deprive any. It simply allows people to legally break the DRM. However the tivoisation clause is a restriction of freedom because it restricts with what the developer can do with the code.
+LinucNerd The GPL is Stallman's attempt at passing totalitarian-style communist off as "Freedom". GPLv2 was a popular Stallman attempt at this. However, people started finding loopholes in GPLv2 that allowed them to do things that Stallman didn't like. Normally, if one believes in real, actual Freedom they are perfectly fine with allowing others to do what they want. However, Stallman doesn't believe in real, actual freedom. He wants to control what freedom people enjoy. Thus, he decided he needed create the GPLv3 - which has even more strings attached to how to use software.
+Reginald Greene The GPL doesn't try to influence the economy in any way. For a software license to influence the economy, you must legally connect the license to the control of money... And that's exactly how proprietary software was born. So if a license is to be associated with totalitarianism, it's got to be a proprietary software license, not one that has nothing to do with the control of money.
+Johnny English Your argument is barely coherent English. I don't expect someone defending the totalitarian GPL to use good logic... but at least they should try to construct coherent sentences...
You didn't get the point. GPL requires that any work you made which is based on some other GPL work should also be release under GPL. That's why GPL is considered totalitarian or communism or virus. That's why many devs prefers to distribute their open-source work under permissive licenses such BSD. That is: take the work (source code included) and do what you want, just mention my name somewhere (coyright holder). That's it. You can take my work to create some other open source software or proprietary software, it doesn't matter.
i have to admit i agree with stallman. the word 'freedom' keeps coming up again and again, and i get it's a hard topic, but i just feel like the gpl is a licence that protects users freedom, so it does make sense for it to not allow taking someone else's freedom. you are *not* free to take someone else's freedom. i mean, should you have the "freedom" to kill enslave someone? no, because everyone should be free to live and not be a slave, and that implies protecting that freedom from those who want to take it away, and this is undebatable. so i also think the same should apply to software. no one should have the power (or 'freedom') to take someone else's freedom to study, run, modify, distribute, and/or sell free software.
@@thereddrob imagine being this disingenuous. you know i'm not arguing that. all i'm saying is the gpl is a licence that *protects* people's freedom. that means it cannot allow people taking away the freedoms it gives, otherwise it'd be useless. i made the comparison with slavery and murder to help illustrate why it would be useless and those two examples are pretty much undebatable. i don't think anyone would say people should have the right to kill or enslave people. the right to live implies you don't have the ‘freedom to kill’, and the right to not be property of someone implies no one has the ‘freedom to enslave people’. in other words, sometimes freedom of something implies taking that freedom away is forbidden. that's the principle i was trying to illustrate with those examples. the gpl uses that principle to make sure people have the freedoms it gives, and i think it's really important to have that in mind when taking specifically about the version 3 because people were arguing (including linus) that companies like tivo had the right to use their hardware to prevent people from modifying the software. i don't think they're right. one of the freedoms the gpl gives is the freedom to modify the software. but the tivo was doing prevented that freedom, which made the licence useless. people like linus say the gpl is just about ensuring you have the changes people made to the software available, but that's not true. sure, you have the changes back, but that's not the reason it exists. the gpl has always been about freedom (in this case freedom regarding software, but freedom nevertheless). it would be disingenuous the argue it's not - just look at what the fsf, the nonprofit that makes the gpl, advocates for. even if you don't agree with the reasons why the fsf put that anti-tivoisation clause there, saying the ‘gplv3 violates everything that gplv2 stood for’ is either being ignorant or dishonest.
“Software freedom” is not its own purpose, it is a tool. The problem is, that the FSF is getting religious about it. It is like the people who yell for freedom of speech, yet what they really want is you to follow their opinion. We are all glad that we have Linus Torvalds, or else free software would just be a niche for ideological fanatics. Which is exactly what we would have if the FSF reigned supreme.
Freedom zero is an important freedom. Perhaps one day in the future, all devices will run Linux as a kernel; but, the hardware will be so locked down we will only be able to use it as the vendor intends. That day is here, and it's only getting worse. Torvalds doesn't care because it doesn't effect him immediately enough for it to matter. But if you want a straight cut and a proper measurement, Torvalds, by his own admonition here, states that he is indifferent at best, and hostile at worst, to Freedom 0. That is the implication of his statements. GPLv2 has a bug, and that bug is, on specific hardware, it can't provide Freedom 0 (the freedom to run the program as you wish). And that's unfortunate... The days of ix86 are gone. Hopefully we can stay free.
Torvalds' argument is that GPLv3 changes the deal and should have been treated as a separate license track with no uplicensing, like AGPL used to be. Remember, the GPL contains a no further restrictions clause for a reason. Hell, v3 had to explicitly weaken that clause to allow compatibility with AGPL, and there's no way to disagree with that and still be in the v3 ecosystem. And yes, there are people who do not believe AGPL to be a Free license either. Notably, that set includes Hector Martin, one of the staunchest defenders of Freedom Zero I can think of. He's currently doing a bang-up job porting Linux to Apple Silicon, and his hacking history includes breaking open locked-down hardware such as the Nintendo Wii. So, yes, it's entirely reasonable to believe in the right to use software as you wish and still think stronger copylefts are a bad way to do that. My personal opinion is that there's a limit to what freedoms a copyleft can protect (hello SSPL), because there's also limits on what actions a copyright can restrict. In fact, GPLv3's TiVo clause *doesn't actually stop TiVo*, because TiVo already worked around weaker language in GPLv2 by putting the technical restrictions in their own app rather than the kernel. So you can absolutely disagree on the terms of the license without disagreeing with the goal. (Or, are you going to argue that BSD users don't care about Freedoms 1, 2, or 3?)
@@SuperSmashDolls It seems to me that the best way to go about the hardware side of things is sweeping policy. As in, the FTC telling Tivo or whoever that they cannot lock down the hardware; they must give owners the right to repair. Licenses, copyright, trademarks, etc. seem to have always been more pertinent to ideas, information, art, stories, characters, concepts, etc. and not applicable as regulatory practices for physical goods. Policy and legislation are better solutions for physical goods; the same way the law tells us we can't make or sell bombs or that Peter Pan peanut butter can't have rat feces in it should be the same way the law tells Tivo they can't keep their users from repairing their hardware. This is just a layman's perspective, I could be totally misguided here.
V2 has loopholes that should be addressed in a new license. V3 was well intended but too idealistic and neglects real world economic issues in adoption. The trick is just enough restriction to prevent the abuse and lockdown issues such as tivoization, but not so tight that you cause license compatibility issues or scare off the oldguard that still doesn't full underwrite FOSS. As such V2-style(patched up with a view to long term market strategy) is good for initial market adoption(Linux is still in this phase), V3 style is more choice once the item is the market standard. BSD/MIT/ and public domain licenses actually have the opposite issue in that they are so liberated/"free" that they can be captured and turned proprietary and the FOSS portion comes to a development stall. The prime example being Linux and BSD; the GPL allowed Linux to benefit from downstream development and compound growth while BSD is taken advantage of by the likes of Apple. The flaw in BSD licensing is that the core project can be expanded with proprietary alterations until the original BSD portion is vestigial and all the users have become dependent on the proprietary infused project, at which point the withered free bits are cut out and presto you go from FOSS to typical EULA.
This is an excellent summary. The only point you are missing is that for some people, as Linus says, all they care about is "here is something cool I made, I hope you can use it," and they don't care about getting source code back. For that purpose, BSD is perfect. You are looking at things from the view that growing the open source project must be the end goal; for that goal, yes, BSD is not great. But if you look at it with the yardstick, "Did my code get used broadly?" then the BSD code integrated into Mac OS is a great success.
@@solderbuff at least the Linux kernel modified by Android is under GPL2, as any other Linux kernel. Google itself obviously prefers BSD-type licenses as it likes to just take free stuff (and it doesn't mind giving away free stuff either, as with Chrome engine)
@@solderbuff well, everyone has their own definition of freedom, as well as the definition of justice. If I decided to opensource some of my software that was actually good, I would feel bad if other people could just take it without giving anything back. So, I would have chosen GPL2. Is giving your improvements back too much to ask?
When you see Free Software as in Freedom software you realize that GPLv3 is a security bug fix over GPLv2, on the other hand When you see Free Software as in free beer then Linus arguments make sense.
Linus never argued that "free software" cannot be monetized (in fact, it was monetized all the way since mid-90s when the first version of RHEL was shipped). He only cares about getting the code back, while FSF people have some idealistic concepts in mind of what "free software" should look like.
I agree 100% with Linus on this issue. I will add: another thing which isn't explicitly mentioned is: GPLv2 is *simpler*. For the most popular line of free software licenses, you'd like them to be a baseline, of sorts, for free software licenses (a further reason you'd like GPL's to be such a baseline is that they are the ones who coined the term "free software"). As a baseline, it should be incredibly *simple*. It should not have lots of exceptions (in fact, it should have no exceptions). Those special cases that GPLv3 tries to circumvent should be, as Linus suggested, in an entirely different license -- an addon or extension, of sorts, rather than a "new version". Using a software analogy, ff 50% of users use a particular addon, does that mean the addon should be included by default in the upcoming release? NO! Even if 90% of users did so, I'd still argue that it should not be. The baseline should be as vanilla as possible, which is exactly what GPLv2 (and not GPLv3) is.
Then they are simply not used by the owner. But according to the GPLv2 you still have to make your modified sourcecode available should anybody want to have a copy. And you also need to include a statement that you modified the code so that your change is not misattributed to the original developer.
The improvements don't replace anything, they just have to be made public. The original owner, or anyone else, is free to use whichever version they please.
honestly I find it funny that Linus here is having to point out that GPLv3 violates the freedom of people to use the code how they want. That's my only real issue with the FSF to be honest, they have their own definition of freedom, that makes sense at a glance, but fails at the edge cases. I think they mean well, and they do a hell of a lot of good, but they are so focused on what I can only describe as anarcho-freedom. In other words, making a society wherein it is impossible or unfathomably rare for a person to be ABLE to choose to give up freedoms. If I buy a tivo product, I have used my freedom to purchase what I wish, to give up my freedom to decide what software runs on that machine. In the goal to make sure everyone always has maximum freedom, you have to take away people's freedom to choose what freedoms they actually want. (this is especially dangerous IMO when multi-national governmental bodies attempt to give themselves the power to legislate what hardware can be on a device that was privately designed, privately engineered, privately manufactured, and privately sold to private consumers because god forbid people buy an Android to get USB-C charging.)
People are free to choose to buy tivoized products. However, that excludes them from using GPLv3 licensed software. What exactly is the benefit of tivoization to the end User for 95% of it's use cases?
@@vanessaxoax7646 obviously that's all it stops, but the point is the FSF are promoting it as if it's freedom when it's not. I don't need to prove to anyone tivoisation helps anyone, I need to prove it's people's choice whether they want to use it or not. How does chopping off your dick help people? Got nothing? Great then the government owns your dick, you don't get to choose what you do with it because you might make the wrong choice and we need to stop that from happening. The "how does this help X Y or Z people" argument relies on me giving a fuck about those people, I don't, I care about rights. Anyone imaginable can write a compelling sob story, sob stories aren't evidence nor reasoning. This is the same thing people use to try to justify the EU constantly trying to legislate Apple; I don't need to prove that the lightning port helps the end user, the reality is that users are aware of the proprietary port, and choose to buy the device anyway. The end user weighs what they want and what they don't, if they don't mind being fucked by a proprietary port or tiboization that's THEIR choice, not yours. If they don't want those things to happen, don't buy those products, it only affects you if you let it affect you. You have the right to give away your rights. You have the freedom to give away your freedom. You have the right to buy from a company that doesn't respect you. And you have the right to use software that locks you out. If you don't want to do those things that's perfectly acceptable, you CAN do many things that you shouldn't. However, just as well, if you recognize your own agency you must equally recognize others' agency if they choose something different than you.
@@robonator2945 Your both right and wrong. GPLv3's tivoisation clause does indeed restrict the devolopers freedom. However GPLv3's DRM clause *does not* restrict the developers freedom. It simply grants more. It grants the freedom to break DRM legally. TLDR; Tivoisation clause restricts developers freedom. DRM clause creates more freedom.
The simple solution? More licenses and let the programmers decide. Then when the most popular licenses are tallied, they will become common knowledge for their nitch.
The better solution: get a law passed to remove the DMCA’s soft ban on reverse engineering, and ban companies like Apple and Google from making devices that don’t have terminals that allow users to write their own code for the device.
Honestly think about where we would be now without the enthusiasm of these open source/free spftware giants like Stallman and Torvalds. How unchecked software couldve been if the movement never caught on, and how locked down amd violated we as users would be. Its already bad enough as it is. Thanks to all those great people.
thatdude92194 It's up to the owner of something to do with it as he pleases. That's a basic human right. If you were to write some source code, then nothing is stopping you from letting other people have a look. But nothing says you have to. And there's plenty of software that's available for inspection while other examples are closed. That's the idea of a BSD license - freedom for the developer to do what he wants. Got a beef with corporations? Try living with no corporate products for a whole day.
+Ewie M Developers absolutely have the right to make their OWN code proprietary. I don't like it, but it's their code. But they don't deserve the right to make OTHER PEOPLE'S code with some changes proprietary, and that's allowed by the BSD/MIT licenses and not by the GPL. They're taking advantage of the fact that somebody has given them source code, and not giving back. And I don't "have a beef" with corporations but I also don't blindly praise everything they do.
thatdude92194 Taking your last comment first, nobody is blindly praising corps, but I'm OK with them playing an important role in our civilization when it's outcomes are positive. That includes hiring employees and turning a profit. As far as developers taking other people's code proprietary, I'm not sure what you mean. If someone copies a piece of open source code, enhances it, then makes the end result proprietary, he hasn't affected the original code in any way. It's still there for anyone to use. If someone doesn't like having their code used that way, they can always use a GPL license. "Giving back" is a point of view not shared by everyone.
It can be hard to definite "bigotry": one man's righteous crusade is another man's totalitarianism. He's saying that _as he interprets it_ the FSF's trajectory is a bit too ideological in a way that doesn't benefit end-users the way the EFF's current trajectory is and does
@@codegeek98 I know I'm two years late but Linus didn't talk at all about end-users in this speech, and only about developers. He's not stupid, he wouldn't claim that GPLv3 hurts end-users when it very obviously doesn't. The only people who GPLv3 hurts are those who seek to restrict user freedom.
Soon the Hurd Kernel will be out, rest assured it will be in GPL3 for those who want it. I imagine, they strip a Linux distributions and use Hurd under the hood and their will be a split in system use among the Opensource Linux family. Those who agree with Linus will keep using Linux and those with Stallmen will go Hurd.
I think the reason Sony and Apple chose BSD over Linux is because under BSD license you can take the code, modify it and make it proprietary. If they chose Linux their code would have to be open source and in Apple's case people would just copy macOS features and add to their own Desktop Environments and make Apple's product less desirable in the process because you would be able to get something very similar for free.
I would be inclined to believe that a company like Sony(who makes the playstation) would prefer to use software under the GPLv2 license rather than GPLv3 since v2 seems to be less restrictive. From what Tetex is saying, I take it that they chose BSD because it's even less restrictive, in a way that matters to them. Though perhaps you(Amit) are talking about some other reason?
Yes, the BSD style licenses mean that companies make proprietary versions. GPLv2 means there is a common codebase that lots of people use. Vanilla FreeBSD isn't widely used party because Apple, Sony, etc take bits of it and make them proprietary.
First of all, what's the difference between hardware and software, if we think about freedom in general? And second, if I PAY for some hardware, then it means it's mine. I should have opportunity to make any changes with it and use it us I wish... It's that simple dear Linus...
If running your own OS was never advertised functionality for the device then you can't pretend you have some intrinsic right to be able to do so. I do think you're free to *try* to make the hardware do anything you want, since you paid for it and hence own it, but I don't see any legitimate reason to complain if you *can't* make it do something that the manufacturer never said it could do in the first place. Whether this is a hardware limitation or software limitation, and whether this was intentional or not, seems quite irrelevant to me. You can of course try to complain to the manufacturer and convince them to endow devices with such functionality. You can look for alternatives and vote with your money. You can try making an alternative that does what you want, or pay people to make one. Those are pretty much your options afaict.
Yes, you are free to do so. Just like manufacturers are free to use safety screws or just glue devices so you cannot open them. See non replaceable batteries on phones? You can use a saw or a drill or whatever. It's like this with software inside your hardware. You can try to change it, it is not impossible, but just made really difficult.
Well hardware is not so simple. Hardware is a product and the one that makes it is legally bound on a lot of things, if they let you change anything their life goes to hell. Law needs to change regarding a few things for that to be viable to both sides
Almost a decade later, and still I have to wonder if people who reference this excerpt, to further an anti-copyleft agenda, ever listened to it. Tivoization wasn't in the user's interest. Someday, I hope, "OSHW" will win out and stuff like proprietary IP cores will be a thing of the past, and FPGAs and whatever technology that follows it can move as freely and ethically as software does in this era of Linux. It's happening, ever so slowly, but it took Linux 15 years to take over the world. We are only now seeing the first fully FLOSS FPGA toolchains, and the first replacements for IP cores.
I'm a user so I appreciate GPLv3. Personally, I'd like it if free software existed per the FSF's vision. But I'm not a developer so I have no frame of reference for why developers hate GPLv3 so much.
@canoshizrocks Well, here's one data point for you, of a developer who supports the GPLv3, and the Affero license. Linus, in this clip, states plainly the beef with the license becoming the "new GPL": that he liked that the kernel could be used in devices for which there was no reasonable way to extract the running code. Like a TiVo box, or today a Roku TV (or any appliance.) It's an opinion. You could say that this sort of thing violates the principle of downstream (you) having the same rights as upstream, but technically every smart TV seller can put a link to the kernel sources in the manual and say they comply with GPLv2. Unfortunately, this is where the "developer hate" meme comes from; that corporations will search for, and remove, GPLv3 code destined for closed devices; or even if it isn't destined, just because their lawyers don't understand FLOSS. I'm sure another developer can respond and say I'm wrong, but there's no official census. I know personally many authors who choose the GPLv3 and that link to it, and I see many, many GPLv3 works in use. My original comment was to say that a lot of GPLv3 hate is just general copyleft hate from permissive license users, and citing Linus from this clip is disingenuous, because he had a specific beef and wouldn't be allied with those quoting it in the context of anti-copyleft (Torvalds and all the system bosses have been unwavering in their support for copyleft, he picked a copyleft license for the kernel and git very deliberately.) I do think the world would be better if I could inspect and alter my car's software without an unreasonable amount of work, but I think we landed in an okay position having the kernel stay GPLv2. It would have been much worse if anti-Tivoization language had died altogether. And while I think that the draw of having the best software, maintained by the world, and just not wasting money would have forced manufacturers to comply, I very well could be wrong, and there's things like regulated industry (phones, medical, radio) that I don't have a ready answer for. So we have two licenses, which I think is the bargain that Torvalds wanted.
I don't agree with Linus on this one (one more thing you could say), Tivo didn't do something legally wrong, but using something that is intended by its licence to be studied modified and redistributed freely and puting it in a locker is definitely not what gplv2 stood for.
But it's not in a locker at all. You just can't run modified versions on the hardware they created. You absolutely CAN run it on some other device, or use pieces of the source code for whatever other purpose, under GPLv2.
That's entirely the question of opinions. For FSF, what Tivo did was illegal, they just forgot to include the relevant clause into GPL2. For Linus, this was perfectly fine. So, why would you believe that FSF has more rights than the creator of a product licensed under one of FSF licenses?
@@Spongman And I think he should care about the device, or else you are in effect restricted from excercising your freedoms. If I have bought the computing device, I should be free to modify the software it is running so it does what I wish.
What does it mean to rescinded code? Sry I'm not a native speaker and I do not have so much knowledge about this topic. Do you mean you can loose code under GPLv2 but not under GPLv3? I think Linus is saying it the other way around... He said he gives somebody code and with GPLv3 they can somehow avoid giving him changes back...
That was probably the most sensible and calm talk I’ve ever seen from Linus about a topic he probably cares about a lot.
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He is very calm and rational about his talks what I seen so far. I think the crazy talks where he isn't calm are the ones that will be cut down to the crazy part and shared most. Because those are the parts that generate traffic.
In general, particularly now, he seems to be respectful in person but honest. He almost always seems to admit his own limitations to the point of self-denegration many times, even calling himself "a really unpleasant person" and "I'm not a visionary" and "I'm not technical", and ends discussion of his points by saying things like, "but that's just me and other people are different," and even things like, "those differences have turned out to be a good thing for Linux." He may have calmed down with age, of course, as well. He even says that those times he makes very harsh comments are obviously hyperbole and it just comes with passion. I personally don't agree with using those comments but I agree with the point about respect needing to be earned and not immediately given (in the realm of the technical; I think all people deserve respect, empathy, etc. outside of that (which is why I would probably be more tactful myself, but also why I can empathesize with him saying those comments; it's a different vernacular, and as he says, you find the people with whom you want to work and part of that is sharing that perspective and vernacular).) I mean, even with regards to the infamous "Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate," says he holds no hostility towards Tanenbaum. I think overall, even though he says he is not a "people person," he actually shows quite a bit of empathy without compromising his own values.
I have seen him a little more aggressive, saying things like "F*** NVIDIA" and such. But again, I think that's just part of how he talks. He deals in the abstract of ideas for the most part (not that I'm "inside his brain," but it seems he is not thinking of the people he is hurling the insults towards as "people," (and we all objectivify each other and ourselves to a large degree in any domain; we're too complex to think about everything) but rather sources of ideas, perhaps), recognizes that he isn't always tactful (although often is), and is passionate.
@@math3matics I agree with what you are saying.
I also don't think he ever was really 'hostile'.
I just think if you look at the history of Linux it's in essence a hobby project which gained A LOT of traction.
I think it's like with a lot of other stuff like python, perl or php for example.
The people who started them did not do so with the thought of widespread implementation. A lot were and still are just people with technical knowledge who tried to solve a problem they had.
And just because a person has expertise in one field does by no means mean that they are some kind of genius.
And a lot of people might just underestimate how hard good communication is.
So I think Linus shouldn't be seen as some kind of bad spokesperson or something.
I think he is more so a passionate programmer who happens to be demanded to speech in public.
But even if I think that the public image is always sensationalised... I feel like he has really calmed down a bit over the years.
If you look at the mailing lists and stuff like that as well.
@@thingsiplay Actually, from what I've seen, I believe that when he lashes out he has exhausted all his patience already. It's when he has to deal with persistent stupidity. Everybody is sometimes stupid, but some people are consistently stupid, at least in some regards. It's such people which he lashes out at. Even then, even if the package is annoying or even offensive, the content is meaningful and thought through. IMO.
I love Linus so much. He has opinions and doesn't hold back with them.
"strong opinions" ^^
One might not be on the same side as Linus but I really like that he can (and always does) give you logical arguments for his strong opinions :)
+wullxz without a doubt. I'm not exactly a Linus fan (I actually think he's a total dick), but I can absolutely not argue with his logic. He does have logical and understandable points for all his opinions and I respect him for saying them out loud and as a programmer.
yeah, I agree, he probably is a dick ^^
its like lose motion. He cant hold his assholeness.
The problem with Linus is having opinions about topics he is absolutely an idiot in.
Legally speaking the lack of consequences in GPLv2, leads to a situation where it is relatively hard to get a judge to order an injuction (because the licence doesn't contain the right to injunction). When the licence include a injunction-on-violation clause, it's a LOT easier to get a judge to grant your injunction, because it's the automatic legal consequence all parties agreed to.
The lack of formal consequences on violation, is a flaw in GPLv2. Not a feature.
But Linus has more legally flawed interprentation of the law and licences:
- He thinks the GPL allows him to open up certain hooks into the kernel to other (non-gpl) (combined)modules. It doesn't. (even though I do agree it should)
- He thinks the GPL allows him to use in-code declaration to open up certain kernel "hooks" to non-gpl modules, but prevent the use of others. It doesn't. (even if the GPL allowed the first bulletin, it still doesn't allow adding additional restrictions byond GPL, which he would be doing here)
Simply put: GPLv2 is a VERY BAD licence to use for libraries and kernels specifically. No sane legal professional would advice anyone to use GPL(v2) for use in Kernels and Libraries.
What he is doing here is presenting his own incompetence in legal maters as "features". Which he shouldn't, simply because he educates people and he doesn't have the knowhow to do so.
Everytime I listen to this man, I just respect him more.
@Christian W Offending people is like shooting fish in a barrel.
@Christian W he has always been like this. His news letters have always been about insulting him.
@Christian W "I like offending people because I think people who get offended should be offended." - Linus Torvalds
@@floatingblaze8405 That is an excellent quote.
@@viheriaruikkusenpai1158 sounds like dogmatism.
This is, IMO, a very good point. If he doesn't agree with the the GPLv3, he obviously shouldn't use it.
That's not a fair argument as that's not what "versioning" implies.
Versioning explicitly implies "this version is equivalent to the previous but newer an improved" or the older version is "outdated and superceded"
If it has a different purpose it should have a different name.
@@anonymousperson015 No actually none of that is explicitly implied, not according to any readily available dictionary definition.
@@anonymousperson015 and*
superseded*
@@Bobo-ox7fj Not explicitly. Nothing is explicitly implied. Something cannot be both explicit and implicit.
@@justincameron9123 Well I doubt you'll find a definition for "explicitly implied" as it's an oxymoron in the first place (as Lord Valen pointed out): something is either explicit or implied. However, removing the verbiage used point (and I'm pretty sure you meant the definition of "version," anyway), what is the point of versioning if it is not what Anonymous Person stated? Would it really make sense to create an entity B, something completely different in many ways to Entity A, and call it Entity Av2? Something doesn't need to be in the dictionary to be true, as well. However, the most pertinent definition of "version" I found (readily available by the way; it took me 5 seconds to find) was a sub-definition pertaining to software and it says, "a particular release of a piece of computer software" with the main definition being, "a particular form of something differing in certain respects from an earlier form or other forms of the same type of thing." This is vague enough to say things like "it's a license so it's in the same category" or something like that, but, philosophically, I think it's quite clear it's implying it's a continuation of the same entity (and thus would have the same functionality or same principles). Versioning would be a mess otherwise, for which I'll cite my previous, contrived example of entity B being called Entity Av2 when it's completely different.
Must say its refreshing to hear a no bullshit explanation like this
@@alfa-psi Monty Python's Flying Circus
I know it's late but I can't help but watch this from time to time and Linus really is legendary. I like his "roughness" tbh. Sometimes it is a bit offensive true, but such is life, you gotta be able to take hard critique and get back up, unfortunately. And sometimes such rough talk is a good slap to the face so you wake up.
Why unfortunately? Absolutely nothing gets done if everyone is a fraudulent nice guy. Why fraudulent, because five minutes later they invariably try to socially pressure you to do their bidding without admitting that's exactly what they are trying to do.
I truly respect him for that. He is honest and doesnt hold back about his feelings and views.
I actually find it quite normal and how it should be done. I have the feeling while americans are more confused by it, europeans get it a bit more. (I'm german for example) ... But that's just a guess.
@Salatwurzel - yeah, Finnish people are generally straightforward.
Nothing's late with on demand video! But I (believe I) completely agree with you, and would even say he's not even really that "rough" (and I like that you put it in quotes). When people say that he is "tactless" or "rough" or whatever, to me it's just a set of valid principles (respect needing to be earned, etc.) and a vernacular that is not meant to be taken literally ("how are you still alive being that stupid," etc.). He actually is quite tactful, IMO, without comprising his values. For instance, in this video, he is very polite to the person who asked the question but stated his opinion honestly, and then ended with, "but that's just me". He even said that GPLv3 is a fine license, it's just not GPL and thus shouldn't be called v3 of it. He'll even admit his weaknesses often (I believe even saying he would die on an island if he had to write a good looking GUI) and also say that it's good to have multiple perspectives working on a project (although I believe that's in another video or interview, one in which he talks about how he changed his perspective on involving others and matured, thus admitting he had a poor perspective before, etc.).
He may appear tactless in text based communications (mailing lists and forums and such) but it's always hard to judge tone and in those forums, without a physical person there, you're more in the realm of abstract ideas. I may not use the same rhetoric as him but I am completely empathetic to it.
@@RiversJ That's a great point. Most people who want to get things done but also be nice will end up just trying to manipulate you via that kindness, which is very deceptive and, I would consider, even worse from a morality perspective than being "harsh" or "tactless" or however people want to label Linus.
It's kinda funny how Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman are so different from each other and they're both the fathers of GNU/Linux.
Thats the spirit of freedom...you can have different idea and different decission...😁
@@AhmadFadhlibinMahjuddin Chaos
No, Torvalds is the father of Linux and Stallman is the father of gnu
@@Mysticsam86 it's gnu/linux. Linux is just the Kernel.
@@rishi2791 Exactly that Torvalds created and Stallman funded the GNU Project.
GPLv2 seems the best license. I've noticed with more liberal licenses like BSD, MIT, etc, is that companies then make proprietary versions and don't contribute all code back.
So for example PostgreSQL has companies that contribute to the open source version, but also sell their proprietary versions with extensions that they keep closed. If Linus had gone with a BSD type license you'd have proprietary versions of Linux with, say, custom and closed source file systems. GPLv2 means everything is open sourced.
for me, i think not, gpl 3 enforcing the ban of tivoization really is a good thing.
I always go with BSD so that companies can use my code in their products
GPLv3 is better, because it prevents Tivoization & hardware DRM that affects the software. GPL is about guaranteeing & spreading end-user freedom/liberty, not necessarily developers getting their code back which is just a byproduct.
I don’t think your last point is entirely correct. As far as I understand the license, only the kernel would be covered by the “copyleft” clauses, not user space. So any changes to kernel code must be made open, but that wouldn’t prevent a company from making a distribution with a number of essential user space components published as closed source. I mean isn’t this what Android does by making essential libraries closed source? That’s why Replicant basically had to reimplement most of the standard libraries and other essential components in their free version of Android.
@@phillafco1039 Yes but even the kernel gets forked and made proprietary with a liberal license. GPL ensures there's a single community coding the same codebase.
"The FSF has a lot of nice people in it" - another wonderful quotable from Linus ;)
"Im sure some of them are good people, but most of the people they are sending are murders and rapists and we have to secure our community. We have to build a firewall." -Linus Torvalds
It is called friendly software foundation for a reason.
Translation: The majority are still nutters.
@@Anonsage3 Amazingly, that quote is still valid in the new context you placed it in!
@@dannyarcher6370 It's incredible when Linus has had a literal murderer write file system drivers for his kernel ;)
Very reasonable and respectful position here from Torvalds.
This man has incredibly embraced the freedom! It's pretty difficult to fathom all of his thoughts. He is just wonderful!
Freedom has (or should always have) limits.
Does Linus take these limits in account? (that's a real question - I've stopped listening to him a long time ago)
linus doesn't care about freedom though, he only cares about the practical uses of software
@@Valdororthat not freedom.
"When somebody else wrote the code, you don't get that choice, right?"
Well also, one you accepted a bunch of patches for your own OpenSource project, you can't change your choice either (unless you get all submitters you got changes from agree with your change of choice)
Lmao that was a great line
Why does this one guy get to ask a million questions?
Because of that "Lowe's" logo on his T-Shirt? :P
Because he clearly has answers. You got to give him that.
I suppose he's allowed to ask a new question only when there's nobody else to ask questions, because the talk still has time and it's better to have a question than not lol
Because the conference didn't have anyone to police it, and Linus was indulging it.
I don’t like how aggressive and arrogant he can sometimes seem but this was amongst the most sensible license talks in the history of open source.
There is nothing wrong with arrogance, conceited is the bastard thing to be.
Being too nice never brings anything good either materially or in peiple.
@@RiversJ "arrogance is being presumptuous or obnoxious while your conjecture Is correct/superior" where do you get these definitions?
"while your conjecture Is correct/superior" it has nothing to do with that, arrogance is a behavior attribute, has nothing to do with being right or wrong.
Pussies often don't like strong people. Imagine that.
@Can a swallow swallow? Yes. People like you usually don't like me. ;)
Can we mention the arrogance displayed by the question?
Wait, this isn't Tom Scott.
Not yet. Wait a few years... And hamburgers.
For one who does not tout themselves as a good public speaker Torvalds sure is good at it.
I think he’s great at improvising answers to questions. He just doesn’t like doing prepared talks without someone asking questions for example
Tivoisation is also a problem with nearly all tablet computers and “smartphones” and even some laptops. It’s impossible for the user to replace Android or iOS on these devices with something else, like some regular GNU/Linux distro. Thus development of free software for these devices is stalled. And maybe even at some point, you won’t be able to buy a normal computer anymore, one that isn’t locked down. It’s a dystopian development.
He seems to agree with that. His point is that shouldn't be up to the owners of the software to decide. His idea is "I make open source software, anyone can use it". He doesn't want to add caveats or conditions to using the software. The only condition he has is to publicise any improvements you make.
@@qutuz9495 Yup. That's what I got from the video as well. I do rather get his point - even though the free software on the device now can't be freely developed anymore, it doesn't stop his base intent with free software: That anyone can use the software & if they do they must submit the patches back. The fact that the hardware isn't free doesn't change the "freeness" of the software - the code is still available for people to put into their own hardware if they want.
@@qutuz9495 what does "improvements" entail?
All software running on the Linux kernel?
@@modernkennnern any change to the kernel
@@qutuz9495 He also cares much more about the rights of the developers than the users. Which makes sense, he's sunk a lot of his life into a handful of software projects and wants to protect and enable the developers of those. Why does he care whether you can modify your Tivo?
GPL v4: Ballmer Edition
Lol
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Version 5: Apple iGPL for iOS and macOS
Version 6: somehow anti right-to-repair
Underrated comment
I agree more with Linus than I do with the FSF on this matter. Software freedom is important, but so is freedom of choice.
@nly V2 is FREEDOM. V3 is forced communism. If you want software freedom and respect freedom of others, you use v2.
@nly V3 is, there's no "evidence" needed, the PUBLIC license is free for anyone to read.
@@9001greg You do ought to provide evidence for how/why GPLv3 is “communist”, even if the text of the GPLv3 itself is readily available. (Or even how/why communism is a bad thing or an antithesis to freedom, as it seems like you believe it is.) My understanding of communism (as a non‐communist) does not align with your view/statement, so I would like to see your sources for why you believe this to be the case.
@@FresoVODs Watch the video, brainlet.
@FishSticks commies are the worst.
that remains the fundamental agreement, except gpl3 recognizes the reality that a permissive license on its own does not guarantee that source code is free to use, a fact which companies like microsoft are eager to exploit to enclose the commons
It really looks like GPLv2 has two interpretations and Linus always thought about one and Stallman about the other…
Yes, GPL was always about protecting users' rights, but Linus seems to like only the aspect that protects authors' rights. It's a culture clash.
Wow, it is amazing how a community changes with time and generation. I think the comments section should just be 'Let's bag Linus'. Self entitled idealism. It's not wrong to want to change the world, but someone with a differing opinion than yours is not automatically a lesser being. Society has somehow changed from discussing differing opinions and debate as a good thing and turned it into a skewering by popularity. Breaks the heart to watch. Especially when you can tell some of the intellectual dishonesty taking place along the way. What a waste.
Watch the whole video - the guy adamantly expresses these are his opinions and that he sees the benefits of other options.
The problem is, there can be only so much "differing opinions and debate" if you wish to get anything done. When in a common effort, you have to share the effort's goals to be able to and have the motivation to contribute productively. So, the more people share a project's goals and/or vision, the more current and potential contributors that project has. Which is FOSS world is everything -- that's where "popularity" of ideas comes to play.
It may make more sense to you when you factor in the vast commercial market, which contributes the largest volume of quality code back to the project. Don't get too hung up on free as in beer - v3 restricts what should and so far always has been free. At some point the FSF needs to understand and acknowledge that their position is wrong, so those of us whose livelihoods (producing free software) depend on licenses to allow us to do what we do. The motivation to contribute productively is some times, ok let's be real, in most cases today, is money/paycheck. There is nothing wrong with this but the FSF seems to think that there is, and they are just wrong. The license wars were theirs to lose... and incredibly, they did that. Self-righteous hubris is never a good thing, I don't know how they expected the whole world to join them in that direction.
OptimusPryhme I am not into the Opensource thing but your comment is very very clever, I agree with you
In my opinion everyone is entitled to their own view. Impracticality SHOULD NOT be able to change that, so 'there can be only so much "differing opinions and debate"' to me is an extremely dangerous way of thinking. Sacrificing human rights for practicality....That is wrong on soo many levels. That sometimes we choose things by majority to get things done does not mean that there can only be soo much differeing opinions and debate and it certainly does not mean that other opinions (outside of the soo much box) do not count, which your statement I quoted earlier implies. I really hope you only meant to say that we sometimes need to make decision that does not match some peoples view instead of saying there can only be soo much... because that last idea gives me chills to the bone. And I know I am kinda contradicting my own point of free visions. But Denying other people their human right to me is the only opinion no one should have. Would make the world a much better place.
If Minix was GPL v3 instead of BSD, maybe the Intel IME and the AMD PSP fiascos wouldn't be what they are right now..?
Even more likely, perhaps if Linux was GPL v3 instead of v2, Android phones would be a lot easier to flash.
My last two phones have no drivers available, so I'm stuck with the vendor version. If I want it to have more than 2 hours battery, have a functional touchscreen, sensors and GPS, or even work as a phone, that is. Otherwise, I can painstakingly change the OS, and have a tiny PDA without keys, if I manage not to brick it in the process, yay!
So that's why Linux kernel is released under GNU GPL version 2, even now, November 2019.
I can see Linus is always consistent with his words.
Plus it was impractically impossible to get all the developers to agree to v3.
In fact the FSF screwed the pooch on v3, the industry weight switched behind BSD style licences leading to embrace, extend and don't share the code back.
Additionally if you're a commercial company, you don't want the software you build a product on to be subject to license changes imposing new conditions. Especially by a small organisation with opaque governance.
Excellent views of Linus. It's a must watch.
More like, "excellent view of Linus". Basically, shows all that Linus is about.
can someone hit up steve carrell and see if he's interested in doing a biopic?
Holy shit, yes
Not David Mitchell?
"The FSF is full of crazy, bigoted people"
Seven years later and this quote has aged like a fine wine.
Yeah? what happened at the FSF?
@@Flackon Read the news about Richard Stallman
@@caedenw the news regarding what?
Got any evidence or you gonna complain blindly?
@@Flackon "Richard Stallman chaired the FSF until 2019, when he resigned through comments on sexual harassment and the Jeffrey Epstein case."
The main difference is that for Linus FSF is just a tool for making big and complex software development available for a common programming enthusiast or a small company, to make real programming more accessible to people and to use their efforts for making it even more accessible in the future. Just because programming is fun and big programming is even more fun. But for FSF all the software including Linux kernel itself is not so important bu itself, for them it is just an example for how things should be done overall, it is just a just a tool for moving torwards their political goals, to their bright ideals of global information freedom. Linus just does not care about the big picture, he cares much more about what he personally can create and what would benefit other people like him. He is a professional not a politician and he does not want to expose his projects to new risks just for the sake of some dreams. And who knows if it is a right decision or not but it is absolutely an understandable one.
Linus' way worked, compare Linux to GNU Hurd. Linus' pragmatic approach that doesn't hate all companies allows Linux to be the kernel for mobiles and servers. Otherwise it would be a tiny niche noone cares about.
Well it is matter of choice. Linus has freedom. Some time i feel personally, RMS is bit tough in his approach.
Because it’s not about developmer freedom, according to Stallman.
As long as GPLv2 allows Linus to do what he needs to keep developing the Linux kernel I am fine with it. The only way he'll ever move on to say GPLv3 or onwards is if a loophole in GPLv2 stops him from developing the Linux kernel...
Adding more lines of legal insanity to the mother load of text that is the GPL license these days ain't going to drive up insensitive to invest into open source. Its why licenses like the BSD license grew so popular among corporate entities, people who use your code want as little restrictions posed on them specifically as possible.
yeah, minix says hi
Linus can't change the license of the kernel anymore either. Unless each and everyone having provided patches for it agrees with the change. The kernel is locked into GPLv2 for good. If there happens to be a loophole in future then Linus dug the grave by disallowing followup licenses as replacement.
Well, BSD licence etc is popular with corporate entities because they want to use and make money with other people's work without giving back any of their own work. At the end of the day a company is a company: "I have something you don't have and you have to pay me lots of money to be allowed to use it." That doesn't work if they give that something back.
@@georgelionon9050 A key feature of humanity is that ideologies decay. Corruption corrupts, money monetizes, and usurpers usurp. Loopholes don't even need to be real for a sufficiently large cadre of lawyers to poke holes in any document. So, why make it even easier by letting them change the document itself?
Someday, what you posit will happen. But some of the largest corporations - and governments - on this entire planet use Linux. _They have more lawyers._
@@georgelionon9050 Actually, he can. The entire Kernel is not GPLv2, and Linus has proprietary rights to some of it, copyrights, trademarks that are all his, and it's not like if he went with a better more agreeable license, he'd be alone on it. So if he changes the license on his code, that in no way means it changes anyone else's who contributed, but by contributing they made their work FOSS, and the Kernel team could technically do what Google did to Linux in making Android. If he goes with a different license, and requires contributors to adopt the new license for every new code, over time it will replace all of the old GPL stuff.
GPLv3 undermines free software... because devs hate it so much we drift away from GPL completely
This ^
Devs don't care about their users' freedom.
Freedom is a hassle. Use it or Lose it.
Use GPLv3 for:
- Software
- Plugins
- Add-Ons
Use LGPLv3 for:
- Libraries
- Add-Ons (if is like library)
Use MIT, BSD, Apache, CC0 for:
- Small code
- Medium & Below medium sized libraries
- Tutorials
- Templates
@@powerfulaura5166 Ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. I release my source code under the MIT license because it's less restrictive, and a lot of companies won't let you use GPL'd software (somehow they ignore g++). I don't really blame them. As a dev, I hate the GPL on libraries. According to GNU themselves:
using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs.
This is deliberate on their part. They're trying to make an advantage for free developers over devs that are actually paid to produce software. I'm more than happy to use GPL'd tools (like g++ and gnu make), but I won't use GPL'd libraries. I won't even take the time to decide if they're useful, even for my open-source projects, because I don't want to spend time learning a library that I can't use for my day job. Furthermore, I hate how the GPL acts like a virus. Pull in a GPL'd library, and now your entire project has to be GPL'd. It doesn't matter if you prefer another license.
But as for my end users -- my end users are other developers. And I'm giving them MORE freedom than the GPL does. I'm not out there trying to advance the GNU manifesto. Frankly, I don't agree with it. If you do, that's great. GPL everything you like. But I'm giving my users more freedom than you are.
What did he mean by "the usable BSD-license"? Somebody answered ISC, which is close to the simplified BSD license. Did he really mean that?
The 2-clause?
There is a 3-clause (the original one) and a 2-clause license (the "fixed" one). The third clause required a mention of the author in all products using the software. While this was sensible long ago ("pay by honoring") in practice with modern GNU/Linux systems where there is a huge amount of different software projects incorporated it becomes quite unpractical, that is "non-usable".
Personally I like the MIT(Expat) license more, because it's written in a more modern way, but 2-clause BSD is fine too. (PS: What I mean by more modern, the license is written in a way, that first sentence it takes everything away from you, and then explicitly gives you each freedom right to use, right to copy, right to modify, etc. It's more future safe in a sense if there are things we can't think of yet)
@@georgelionon9050 , I think, you are talking about 4-clause BSD. 3-clause BSD doesn't have a requirement of mentions. Also, 3-clause BSD is still used by such companies as Google.
@@solderbuff You are right, that was 4-clause.
I still don't get which one he's talking about? BSD and MIT are all permissive and not copyleft, I don't see how that'd fly in his book.What am I missing? Or is this like an "OK" license that he wouldn't use but if it must be permissive that's what he'd suggest? I do see how the ISC license once fixed the BSD-2 lic with it saying "and" so that it requires all those things vs the usual BSD way of leaving crucial parts out, but it was updated in 07 and says and/or again so I'm... lost as to what he's saying.
Why do people think he is not a nice guy ?
He speaks his mind and people don't like that. He also just gets on with it and doesn't care really who he offends along the way. I have great admiration for him as a developer.
I recently saw videos with him and I was suprised to see Linus is a twat and unnecessary rude, and I will explain why.
So people can understand, being upfront/direct is very good, but unnecessary insulting
and putting down people is a bad thing, and only a moron does that, and Linus did that on more
occasions.
And is not about being soy-boy like some asskissing fans say here, it's about self-respect and not accepting a person to talk so rude to you like saying "you should be retroactively aborted", Linus is truly a disgusting person with unnecessary insults like this.
Also professional achievements are not an excuse to personal bad behaviour.
@@Puya008 and yet you yourself resort to describing people as "a twat" and "asskissing" ; you don't see what that does to your credibility?
Because he isn't.
I like the content a lot more than the title. >.
which is rare, isnt it
anyone know what Lowe's guy says @8:25? "OK, Well stop plays make it no"? Something about monopolies? He seems perturbed.
He said he's going to stop using the mic now, so that others can ask other questions.
Monopolizing the mic
“OK, well, I’ll stop monopolizing the mic now.”
What i get from this speech is that :
- Linus/GPLv2 focus is on the software.
- Whereas GPLv3 focus is on the user.
___ doesent gplv3 also protect your software from being abused maliciously?
The software must always come first, then with great software, comes happy users.
GPLv2 is mostly about copyright - you're allowed to use, change, and redistribute the software you got.
GPLv3 adds some gnarly anti-patent stuff, allowing anyone to come after companies who distribute GPLv3 software, if they have any patents - even patents that have nothing to do with the software.
@@senseisecurityschool9337 Isn't it the opposite? As far as I understand this, if the company distributes the code under GPLv3, it cannot sue anyone using this code in any way, even if the code (or a portion of it) is covered by company's patents. fsfe.org/activities/gplv3/patents-and-gplv3.en.html#Explicit-patent-grant
@@konstantincanaglia4089 Right, if a company mirrors any GPLv3 software, all patents owned by the company, including totally unrelated divisions of the company, are threatened. Anyone can just commit some random module that uses their patent, and because some dev somewhere in the company mirrored the git repo, the company loses the ability to enforce the patent.
Linux is Linus's project so he can pick the license he wants. Good on him for picking the better license.
The only person I’ve ever heard pronounce the word verbiage properly. Bravo.
medical equipment should not have locked down software running on them. Policy makers don't understand the implications of locked down hardware and walled gardens, vendor lockins, and waste of public money going that route
well opensource is a double edged sword if you have software that is scarecly examined for bugs then opensource is more of a security issue then benefit and i think that is why medical equipment and its software is locked down
Of course they don't, they're paid and paid damn well to pretend to not know.
how about electric meters, or ATMs, or credit-card terminals or other security devices? the day that companies are not allowed to harden their devices against attack when running linux is the day that they stop running linux.
@@Spongman Security through obscurity is hardly security. Having things be open source means that they can be checked to make sure the code has secure protocols. The code that you use is not the data that you use (which is what the code should be able to protect). When you don’t make your code open source, and you give that locked-down hardware to another company, you aren’t going to face more than the slap on the wrist that the credit rating agencies got hit with for releasing hundreds of millions of personally identifying information via channels which only they were able to see the code for!
The incentives to have secure code simply don’t exist for code that is not open source.
@@evannibbe9375 " Security through obscurity is hardly security. "
People say that, but in practice you look at e.g. some commonplace symmetric-key crypto algorithm like AES-256 and you see just how easy it is to inadvertently insert backdoors into it to the point where you need quite a bit of expertise just to roll some canned version of the thing without ending up vulnerable to a padding oracle attack or the like. If you rolled your own shitty homebrew algorithm you'd be SOL if someone managed to figure it out and find an attack but you're still probably better off with that than with a substandard implementation of something well-known. There's a lot of nuance in the discussion that's completely steamrolled by adages like "security through obscurity is no security at all".
I really love how absolutely hostile the asker is in this clip, and how Linus tries to explain his licensing for HIS OWN software...
That gentleman is always welcome to write his own Unix-like, BSD-like Kernel, garner piles of support, bring developers together and create his own system licensed the way he pleases...
You call a respectful disagreement "absolutely hostile"? He did not demand Linus explain anything. He just respectfully asked. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with Torvalds nor with respectfully asking him critical questions.
I actually like his questions, because now Torvalds got a chance to defend his choice and make others like me understand the reasoning behind it. He did not have to defend it, but since his choice does have an influence on us it is nice of him to do so anyway and good of people to ask.
@@dr.c2195 he was acting passive-agressive, I can feel that
/wiki/Tivoization
Linus seems oddly human and acceptable for someone who wrote software that runs the entire web.
That's because he knows the web is ALSO run by BSD, NT, and even OSX.
stop doing substances, he made a humongous contribution to humanity, but your comment is off like you where aiming to Mars from Atlantic ocean, you ended up in the Pacific and getting to Alpha centauri...
Yes I had to exaggerate
He's such a dad. Doesn't care about anything but cares about people but doesn't care about people that doesn't care about people he cares about.
Hard disagree with Linus here. The social contract he points to is, and has always been, based on the 4 freedoms that define "Free software". The second freedom, "Freedom 1" (counting starts at 0), states that recipients of your software are allowed to make modifications and _run their modified versions._ Tivoization violates this freedom by preventing the recipients to _run_ their modified versions. What's preventing a company employing Tivoization from giving me access to a version of the source code that appears benign, while the real application has nefarious code in it that I'm not aware of? Nothing, because since I can not run the software, not even an unmodified version I compiled myself, I can not inspect that the compiled application does indeed do exactly what the source code I've been given would suggest. If I can not inspect the code that runs on my devices, I can not trust it either.
Linus states that as long as he gets access to your modifications, he's good. But this is not a right granted under the GPL, not even under v2. In fact, nobody is under any obligation to contribute their patches back to him. Only the recipients of the modified software are entitled to the modified source code. They are then free to share the modified source code with the general public, or with specific people of their choosing, including with the author directly. But they are _under no obligation_ to do so, and unless the author is himself a recipient of the modified software, _he is in no way, shape or form entitled to the modified source code._
The GPL is not intended to benefit the original author of the source code; it's intended to benefit _its users._
Your final line here hits the nail on the head. Linus is within his rights to hold this opinion, but I think he is missing the forest for the trees by focusing on the software author over the software users.
I wonder what Linus would say about MPL-2.0.
Yeah, sounds like MPL is the license he's looking for.
@@Mr_Yeah tldr on mpl2?
@@Mr_YeahBro it’s been one year and you never answered his question
FSF is the reason a coder nowadays has to moonlight as a lawyer.
also the reason we have free software
@@land2097 Unlicense/MIT are better than GPL.
Uhh, no they really aren't... @@land2097
@@Bill31400Better in what?
GPL v2 will always be better than GPL v3. I continue to love the v2 and use it in some of my projects.
Wow, what an argument. All the things you pointed out....made me look at GPL a new way
That's the point. People should be free to choose whatever license they want, while FSF basically wants anyone who doesn't adhere to GPL v.3 to die
@@viheriaruikkusenpai1158 of course you cannot make a derivative of GPL software and make it proprietary (because GPL disallows it). What I mean is that, as long as you abide by the licenses of the pieces of code you're using, you can license it in whatever way you want, and FSF should stop being so bigoted about that.
Torvalds knew microsoft would suddenly love GPLv3 , 4 years before ;-)
I know micro$oft is shady as shit, seeing they steal, but they also are able to gather copy-pasted ideas into very stable development environments. I'll give them that. Problem is now micro$oft is trying to take over open source software (seeing how they adamantly negated any GNU GPL v2, and they ended up acquiring GNU GPL v3), I wouldn't be impressed if they found a way to find something in GPL v3 they'd "suddenly love it".
The difference between those is that (GPL v3) involved IPs inherit the "viral" clause from the GPL v2 + original IP patents rights are kept by the owner, so if indirectly "upgrading" GPL v3, and some IP from other licenses that may belong to original owner, enforces the license disagreement through any agreeable terms in the scope on GPL v3 but NOT the owner license scope(ding ding, microsoft), their IP has the right to do so, and the GPL v3 won't be in effect unless you:
either *(1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so available*, or *(2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this particular work*, or *(3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients*
Since Micro$oft won't hesitate to send to court anyone that may they find a risk, they will scrap the 3) inmediately or "conform an agreement, where your software would have to give up on any GPL v3 extension that may extend from theirs", the 1)also, since they rely on Windows Kernel as a base for everything, and that is not open source. No doubt they are already open sourcing parts that rely on closed source code. So the coverage is only for the open source part, specifically a software license (entirely different from an IP or trademark), but not their original license part that belongs to them.
Also, there is a clause in GPL v3 that prevents you from using/transporting GPL v3 code from a third party, if you already have an agreement with another third party. Unless the third party is the same, or both third parties agreed to, and you are included. (ie, you work at AMD, want to use patches from Windows, but then want to relicense these changes). You'd need AMD and Micro$oft to agree a relicense, where you, the coder are using their GPL v3 .
So: If you have no desire to support GPL v3: use GPL v2 only . If you upgraded to GPL v3 please use GPL v2 or later license. That way they can adjust to your GPL v2 license and they are obligued to work on GPL v3. You then can say your code is GPL v2 and GPL v3 compatible, but still GPL v2, since GPL v2 and GPL v3 clauses are non-compatible. Making it "read-only source code" or protecting your work if external licenses are voided and your work is fully compliant with their GPL v3 parts
@@codecoderr7495 oh yes the Linux user who post on Reddit "I hate Microsoft they make me so ANGRY😡" 😂
I admire this guy since I was young and installed Linux 0.99 from a new thingy called distro - Soft Landing Software! :)
I don't really necessarily agree with everything he says, but I respect him by saying it - it made be to think, and by thinking, I could put my own convictions in check and get rid of the wrong ones.
A agree with him about the GPLv3 - I'm still using GPLv2 due these reasons.
A also agree that sometimes FSF goes borderline and somewhat bigotry. But I also agree that they have reasons for doing that (not all disclosable at that time), and also acknowledge that people make mistakes now and then - and this is the reason I do not fully agree with Linus about his feelings about FSF.
When fighting monsters, you need to care to do not become one too - and I'm pretty sure that now and them, as any other Human Being, people at FSF crossed that line a bit. I know I did.
It's interesting to note that less than 2 years ago, RMS was caught in a PR trap and had to resign from his position on the FSF due public pressure - a pretty low blow did probably by some Billionaire from the Software Industry in reprisal of a talk RMS did on his former Company - that thing happening 1 week after the talk is too much of a smoking gun to be ignored (but also so much of a smoking gun that it can had be used to hit that same billionaire, so i choose to avoid naming him).
Linus himself was also targeted once, and had to be alway from the Kernel for some months.
Given the current state of affairs, it's understandable a lot of not exactly nice things FSF did in the past. And it's due these reasons I also respected these guys a lot (and do my best to be not on their bad side, by Turing's sake, you can bet you ass I play straight on everything related to GPL!!)
Wow. Finally something I agree with Linus on.
Was it really that hard to agree with him on something? I find myself agreeing with Linus on almost all topics, *except* for the way he sometimes expresses himself.
Вообще-то GPL3 только прикрывает лазейки, при помощи которых обходят GPL2. По изначальному замыслу, авторы GPL2 не хотели давать такие лазейки (патенты, заблокированный загрузчик), просто тогда они не знали, что так будет. У них для более мягких ограничений есть LGPL, для более жёстких - Affero.
Honestly in most of code I use GPLv3 as it's one of nice implementations but I also use BSD licenses. I never use GPLv2 in main projects.
Honestly, GPLv3 is bad. It just turns people away from your project like Apple dropped Bash because of GPLv3. People don't want to deal with the extra restrictions that are not even that important. Why would you care about someone locking your software via hardware? What are the chances of this happening and if it does do you really care?
I would take MIT or Apache 2.0 every time over GPLv3.
@@MaxxxiorPL : a co Ci przeszkadza w GPL2?
@@Tetex I really don't want such people
A trillion company wants to ship my software in their product
Without paying me?
Disgusting
@@Tetex It only turns people away from my project that I couldnt care less about. It they cant even bother to let users use my code however they want, why would i bother letting them do so?
GPLv3 ensures maximum freedom for everyone.
*GPLv3's DRM clause isn't a restriction on any freedom*.
It grants more freedom, it doesnt deprive any.
It simply allows people to legally break the DRM.
However the tivoisation clause is a restriction of freedom because it restricts with what the developer can do with the code.
I'm a user so I appreciate what GPLv3 does for me
GPLv2
GPLv3
have no ide what they are, need to study that :P
***** I know THAT! but I don't know what exsactly the terms for the GPLv2 and DPLv3 says.
+LinucNerd The GPL is Stallman's attempt at passing totalitarian-style communist off as "Freedom".
GPLv2 was a popular Stallman attempt at this. However, people started finding loopholes in GPLv2 that allowed them to do things that Stallman didn't like.
Normally, if one believes in real, actual Freedom they are perfectly fine with allowing others to do what they want.
However, Stallman doesn't believe in real, actual freedom. He wants to control what freedom people enjoy. Thus, he decided he needed create the GPLv3 - which has even more strings attached to how to use software.
+Reginald Greene The GPL doesn't try to influence the economy in any way. For a software license to influence the economy, you must legally connect the license to the control of money... And that's exactly how proprietary software was born.
So if a license is to be associated with totalitarianism, it's got to be a proprietary software license, not one that has nothing to do with the control of money.
+Johnny English Your argument is barely coherent English.
I don't expect someone defending the totalitarian GPL to use good logic... but at least they should try to construct coherent sentences...
You didn't get the point. GPL requires that any work you made which is based on some other GPL work should also be release under GPL. That's why GPL is considered totalitarian or communism or virus.
That's why many devs prefers to distribute their open-source work under permissive licenses such BSD. That is: take the work (source code included) and do what you want, just mention my name somewhere (coyright holder). That's it. You can take my work to create some other open source software or proprietary software, it doesn't matter.
i have to admit i agree with stallman. the word 'freedom' keeps coming up again and again, and i get it's a hard topic, but i just feel like the gpl is a licence that protects users freedom, so it does make sense for it to not allow taking someone else's freedom. you are *not* free to take someone else's freedom. i mean, should you have the "freedom" to kill enslave someone? no, because everyone should be free to live and not be a slave, and that implies protecting that freedom from those who want to take it away, and this is undebatable.
so i also think the same should apply to software. no one should have the power (or 'freedom') to take someone else's freedom to study, run, modify, distribute, and/or sell free software.
Rolf taking someone's open source software and not making your changes open source is slavery rolfff
@@thereddrob imagine being this disingenuous. you know i'm not arguing that. all i'm saying is the gpl is a licence that *protects* people's freedom. that means it cannot allow people taking away the freedoms it gives, otherwise it'd be useless. i made the comparison with slavery and murder to help illustrate why it would be useless and those two examples are pretty much undebatable.
i don't think anyone would say people should have the right to kill or enslave people. the right to live implies you don't have the ‘freedom to kill’, and the right to not be property of someone implies no one has the ‘freedom to enslave people’. in other words, sometimes freedom of something implies taking that freedom away is forbidden.
that's the principle i was trying to illustrate with those examples. the gpl uses that principle to make sure people have the freedoms it gives, and i think it's really important to have that in mind when taking specifically about the version 3 because people were arguing (including linus) that companies like tivo had the right to use their hardware to prevent people from modifying the software. i don't think they're right. one of the freedoms the gpl gives is the freedom to modify the software. but the tivo was doing prevented that freedom, which made the licence useless. people like linus say the gpl is just about ensuring you have the changes people made to the software available, but that's not true. sure, you have the changes back, but that's not the reason it exists. the gpl has always been about freedom (in this case freedom regarding software, but freedom nevertheless). it would be disingenuous the argue it's not - just look at what the fsf, the nonprofit that makes the gpl, advocates for. even if you don't agree with the reasons why the fsf put that anti-tivoisation clause there, saying the ‘gplv3 violates everything that gplv2 stood for’ is either being ignorant or dishonest.
“Software freedom” is not its own purpose, it is a tool. The problem is, that the FSF is getting religious about it. It is like the people who yell for freedom of speech, yet what they really want is you to follow their opinion. We are all glad that we have Linus Torvalds, or else free software would just be a niche for ideological fanatics. Which is exactly what we would have if the FSF reigned supreme.
^ How to say you don't prioritise user freedom w/o explicitly saying you don't prioritise user freedom
That comparison is insulting to religion and freedom of speech. The FSF are hardcore communists, where the EFF are liberal socialists.
I'm not sure GPL2 requires upstream patching, but perhaps if it is the implied license businesses are happy with that
Freedom zero is an important freedom. Perhaps one day in the future, all devices will run Linux as a kernel; but, the hardware will be so locked down we will only be able to use it as the vendor intends. That day is here, and it's only getting worse. Torvalds doesn't care because it doesn't effect him immediately enough for it to matter.
But if you want a straight cut and a proper measurement, Torvalds, by his own admonition here, states that he is indifferent at best, and hostile at worst, to Freedom 0. That is the implication of his statements. GPLv2 has a bug, and that bug is, on specific hardware, it can't provide Freedom 0 (the freedom to run the program as you wish). And that's unfortunate...
The days of ix86 are gone. Hopefully we can stay free.
this so much.
Torvalds' argument is that GPLv3 changes the deal and should have been treated as a separate license track with no uplicensing, like AGPL used to be. Remember, the GPL contains a no further restrictions clause for a reason. Hell, v3 had to explicitly weaken that clause to allow compatibility with AGPL, and there's no way to disagree with that and still be in the v3 ecosystem.
And yes, there are people who do not believe AGPL to be a Free license either. Notably, that set includes Hector Martin, one of the staunchest defenders of Freedom Zero I can think of. He's currently doing a bang-up job porting Linux to Apple Silicon, and his hacking history includes breaking open locked-down hardware such as the Nintendo Wii. So, yes, it's entirely reasonable to believe in the right to use software as you wish and still think stronger copylefts are a bad way to do that.
My personal opinion is that there's a limit to what freedoms a copyleft can protect (hello SSPL), because there's also limits on what actions a copyright can restrict. In fact, GPLv3's TiVo clause *doesn't actually stop TiVo*, because TiVo already worked around weaker language in GPLv2 by putting the technical restrictions in their own app rather than the kernel. So you can absolutely disagree on the terms of the license without disagreeing with the goal. (Or, are you going to argue that BSD users don't care about Freedoms 1, 2, or 3?)
@@SuperSmashDolls I'd have to digest all that; and I'd prefer not to argue anything. Thanks for the input, didn't know a lot of that.
@@sweetdrreemz dang, respect for the classy-ness
@@SuperSmashDolls It seems to me that the best way to go about the hardware side of things is sweeping policy. As in, the FTC telling Tivo or whoever that they cannot lock down the hardware; they must give owners the right to repair. Licenses, copyright, trademarks, etc. seem to have always been more pertinent to ideas, information, art, stories, characters, concepts, etc. and not applicable as regulatory practices for physical goods. Policy and legislation are better solutions for physical goods; the same way the law tells us we can't make or sell bombs or that Peter Pan peanut butter can't have rat feces in it should be the same way the law tells Tivo they can't keep their users from repairing their hardware. This is just a layman's perspective, I could be totally misguided here.
V2 has loopholes that should be addressed in a new license. V3 was well intended but too idealistic and neglects real world economic issues in adoption.
The trick is just enough restriction to prevent the abuse and lockdown issues such as tivoization, but not so tight that you cause license compatibility issues or scare off the oldguard that still doesn't full underwrite FOSS. As such V2-style(patched up with a view to long term market strategy) is good for initial market adoption(Linux is still in this phase), V3 style is more choice once the item is the market standard.
BSD/MIT/ and public domain licenses actually have the opposite issue in that they are so liberated/"free" that they can be captured and turned proprietary and the FOSS portion comes to a development stall.
The prime example being Linux and BSD; the GPL allowed Linux to benefit from downstream development and compound growth while BSD is taken advantage of by the likes of Apple. The flaw in BSD licensing is that the core project can be expanded with proprietary alterations until the original BSD portion is vestigial and all the users have become dependent on the proprietary infused project, at which point the withered free bits are cut out and presto you go from FOSS to typical EULA.
This is an excellent summary. The only point you are missing is that for some people, as Linus says, all they care about is "here is something cool I made, I hope you can use it," and they don't care about getting source code back. For that purpose, BSD is perfect. You are looking at things from the view that growing the open source project must be the end goal; for that goal, yes, BSD is not great. But if you look at it with the yardstick, "Did my code get used broadly?" then the BSD code integrated into Mac OS is a great success.
Except there are many projects which use BSD-like licenses and are in active development, like Python, Rust, Go, Tensorflow, Android, etc.
@@solderbuff at least the Linux kernel modified by Android is under GPL2, as any other Linux kernel. Google itself obviously prefers BSD-type licenses as it likes to just take free stuff (and it doesn't mind giving away free stuff either, as with Chrome engine)
@@АлексейГриднев-и7р , that's the point of free licensing! GPL is too restrictive.
@@solderbuff well, everyone has their own definition of freedom, as well as the definition of justice. If I decided to opensource some of my software that was actually good, I would feel bad if other people could just take it without giving anything back. So, I would have chosen GPL2. Is giving your improvements back too much to ask?
Linus better live forever.
what about the bsd license?
When you see Free Software as in Freedom software you realize that GPLv3 is a security bug fix over GPLv2, on the other hand When you see Free Software as in free beer then Linus arguments make sense.
well, free software is not as in "free beer"
Linus never argued that "free software" cannot be monetized (in fact, it was monetized all the way since mid-90s when the first version of RHEL was shipped). He only cares about getting the code back, while FSF people have some idealistic concepts in mind of what "free software" should look like.
In summary, you are free to build your own sand castle, just don't step on this castle I helped build.
Companies like Google are stepping on that castle and ruining everything what FSF wanted to protect
I agree 100% with Linus on this issue.
I will add: another thing which isn't explicitly mentioned is: GPLv2 is *simpler*. For the most popular line of free software licenses, you'd like them to be a baseline, of sorts, for free software licenses (a further reason you'd like GPL's to be such a baseline is that they are the ones who coined the term "free software"). As a baseline, it should be incredibly *simple*. It should not have lots of exceptions (in fact, it should have no exceptions). Those special cases that GPLv3 tries to circumvent should be, as Linus suggested, in an entirely different license -- an addon or extension, of sorts, rather than a "new version". Using a software analogy, ff 50% of users use a particular addon, does that mean the addon should be included by default in the upcoming release? NO! Even if 90% of users did so, I'd still argue that it should not be. The baseline should be as vanilla as possible, which is exactly what GPLv2 (and not GPLv3) is.
What does he say at 6:09?
+albertofum He says: "my original license says
"My original license says you can't make money change hands. And that was a mistake."
What if the improvements that I made, are not favored by the original owner?
Then they are simply not used by the owner. But according to the GPLv2 you still have to make your modified sourcecode available should anybody want to have a copy. And you also need to include a statement that you modified the code so that your change is not misattributed to the original developer.
The improvements don't replace anything, they just have to be made public. The original owner, or anyone else, is free to use whichever version they please.
“When someone else wrote the code you don’t get that choice” .. nailed it
honestly I find it funny that Linus here is having to point out that GPLv3 violates the freedom of people to use the code how they want. That's my only real issue with the FSF to be honest, they have their own definition of freedom, that makes sense at a glance, but fails at the edge cases. I think they mean well, and they do a hell of a lot of good, but they are so focused on what I can only describe as anarcho-freedom. In other words, making a society wherein it is impossible or unfathomably rare for a person to be ABLE to choose to give up freedoms. If I buy a tivo product, I have used my freedom to purchase what I wish, to give up my freedom to decide what software runs on that machine.
In the goal to make sure everyone always has maximum freedom, you have to take away people's freedom to choose what freedoms they actually want.
(this is especially dangerous IMO when multi-national governmental bodies attempt to give themselves the power to legislate what hardware can be on a device that was privately designed, privately engineered, privately manufactured, and privately sold to private consumers because god forbid people buy an Android to get USB-C charging.)
People are free to choose to buy tivoized products. However, that excludes them from using GPLv3 licensed software.
What exactly is the benefit of tivoization to the end User for 95% of it's use cases?
@@vanessaxoax7646 obviously that's all it stops, but the point is the FSF are promoting it as if it's freedom when it's not. I don't need to prove to anyone tivoisation helps anyone, I need to prove it's people's choice whether they want to use it or not.
How does chopping off your dick help people? Got nothing? Great then the government owns your dick, you don't get to choose what you do with it because you might make the wrong choice and we need to stop that from happening.
The "how does this help X Y or Z people" argument relies on me giving a fuck about those people, I don't, I care about rights. Anyone imaginable can write a compelling sob story, sob stories aren't evidence nor reasoning. This is the same thing people use to try to justify the EU constantly trying to legislate Apple; I don't need to prove that the lightning port helps the end user, the reality is that users are aware of the proprietary port, and choose to buy the device anyway. The end user weighs what they want and what they don't, if they don't mind being fucked by a proprietary port or tiboization that's THEIR choice, not yours. If they don't want those things to happen, don't buy those products, it only affects you if you let it affect you.
You have the right to give away your rights. You have the freedom to give away your freedom. You have the right to buy from a company that doesn't respect you. And you have the right to use software that locks you out. If you don't want to do those things that's perfectly acceptable, you CAN do many things that you shouldn't. However, just as well, if you recognize your own agency you must equally recognize others' agency if they choose something different than you.
@@robonator2945 Your both right and wrong.
GPLv3's tivoisation clause does indeed restrict the devolopers freedom.
However GPLv3's DRM clause *does not* restrict the developers freedom. It simply grants more.
It grants the freedom to break DRM legally.
TLDR; Tivoisation clause restricts developers freedom. DRM clause creates more freedom.
@@botowner8623 unless a reply isn't showing up, no-one in this thread mentioned anything about DRM.
By that logic, there's nothing wrong with a proprietary license because you can just choose not to use it.
Guys can we fork an Apache source code build upon In then distribute that as Gpl 2? Thank you
Linus is my personal Jesus. I have followed him since 1994. He is the father of God
The simple solution? More licenses and let the programmers decide. Then when the most popular licenses are tallied, they will become common knowledge for their nitch.
The better solution: get a law passed to remove the DMCA’s soft ban on reverse engineering, and ban companies like Apple and Google from making devices that don’t have terminals that allow users to write their own code for the device.
Honestly think about where we would be now without the enthusiasm of these open source/free spftware giants like Stallman and Torvalds. How unchecked software couldve been if the movement never caught on, and how locked down amd violated we as users would be. Its already bad enough as it is. Thanks to all those great people.
Bufff.... he wants to get into chrome-books and he understands that too many restrictions will reduce his possibilities.
I strongly disagree with him, but he makes good arguments. Respect.
I disagree with linus' take. But his decision is perfectly sensible.
Software freedom? That would be a BSD style license.
Not just 3-clause BSD. MIT is a great license too, and ofc public domain as well!
Yeah! That way, developers have the freedom to make sure that YOU can't read the source code they make! Which is obviously better. Hail corporate!
thatdude92194
It's up to the owner of something to do with it as he pleases. That's a basic human right.
If you were to write some source code, then nothing is stopping you from letting other people have a look. But nothing says you have to. And there's plenty of software that's available for inspection while other examples are closed.
That's the idea of a BSD license - freedom for the developer to do what he wants.
Got a beef with corporations? Try living with no corporate products for a whole day.
+Ewie M
Developers absolutely have the right to make their OWN code proprietary. I don't like it, but it's their code. But they don't deserve the right to make OTHER PEOPLE'S code with some changes proprietary, and that's allowed by the BSD/MIT licenses and not by the GPL. They're taking advantage of the fact that somebody has given them source code, and not giving back.
And I don't "have a beef" with corporations but I also don't blindly praise everything they do.
thatdude92194
Taking your last comment first, nobody is blindly praising corps, but I'm OK with them playing an important role in our civilization when it's outcomes are positive. That includes hiring employees and turning a profit.
As far as developers taking other people's code proprietary, I'm not sure what you mean. If someone copies a piece of open source code, enhances it, then makes the end result proprietary, he hasn't affected the original code in any way. It's still there for anyone to use. If someone doesn't like having their code used that way, they can always use a GPL license. "Giving back" is a point of view not shared by everyone.
Alright, I'm going to be honest: I have no idea what any of these words mean.
*Linus* : That's *just* my opinion.
I don't understand, what did he mean by 'just'?
It can be hard to definite "bigotry": one man's righteous crusade is another man's totalitarianism. He's saying that _as he interprets it_ the FSF's trajectory is a bit too ideological in a way that doesn't benefit end-users the way the EFF's current trajectory is and does
@@codegeek98 I know I'm two years late but Linus didn't talk at all about end-users in this speech, and only about developers. He's not stupid, he wouldn't claim that GPLv3 hurts end-users when it very obviously doesn't. The only people who GPLv3 hurts are those who seek to restrict user freedom.
Soon the Hurd Kernel will be out, rest assured it will be in GPL3 for those who want it. I imagine, they strip a Linux distributions and use Hurd under the hood and their will be a split in system use among the Opensource Linux family. Those who agree with Linus will keep using Linux and those with Stallmen will go Hurd.
They've been saying that the Hurd Kernel will be out 'soon' for at least 15 years ...
Honestly they've been saying Linux will take over for the last 20 years...
Hanro50 And given that most consumer devices these days run Linux or a fork of it, they're not exactly wrong.
True
Still waiting pal.
I think this is the reason why playstation chose bsd over linux
I think the reason Sony and Apple chose BSD over Linux is because under BSD license you can take the code, modify it and make it proprietary. If they chose Linux their code would have to be open source and in Apple's case people would just copy macOS features and add to their own Desktop Environments and make Apple's product less desirable in the process because you would be able to get something very similar for free.
I would be inclined to believe that a company like Sony(who makes the playstation) would prefer to use software under the GPLv2 license rather than GPLv3 since v2 seems to be less restrictive. From what Tetex is saying, I take it that they chose BSD because it's even less restrictive, in a way that matters to them.
Though perhaps you(Amit) are talking about some other reason?
Yes, the BSD style licenses mean that companies make proprietary versions. GPLv2 means there is a common codebase that lots of people use. Vanilla FreeBSD isn't widely used party because Apple, Sony, etc take bits of it and make them proprietary.
First of all, what's the difference between hardware and software, if we think about freedom in general? And second, if I PAY for some hardware, then it means it's mine. I should have opportunity to make any changes with it and use it us I wish... It's that simple dear Linus...
If running your own OS was never advertised functionality for the device then you can't pretend you have some intrinsic right to be able to do so.
I do think you're free to *try* to make the hardware do anything you want, since you paid for it and hence own it, but I don't see any legitimate reason to complain if you *can't* make it do something that the manufacturer never said it could do in the first place. Whether this is a hardware limitation or software limitation, and whether this was intentional or not, seems quite irrelevant to me.
You can of course try to complain to the manufacturer and convince them to endow devices with such functionality. You can look for alternatives and vote with your money. You can try making an alternative that does what you want, or pay people to make one. Those are pretty much your options afaict.
Yes, you are free to do so. Just like manufacturers are free to use safety screws or just glue devices so you cannot open them. See non replaceable batteries on phones? You can use a saw or a drill or whatever. It's like this with software inside your hardware. You can try to change it, it is not impossible, but just made really difficult.
Well hardware is not so simple. Hardware is a product and the one that makes it is legally bound on a lot of things, if they let you change anything their life goes to hell. Law needs to change regarding a few things for that to be viable to both sides
@@jeriellopez4927 Good thing right to repair is about to bust those anti-consumer anti-freedom practices.
@@nono1271 I just wish it all went further
I like the Do what the F you want license. GPLV2 is fine.
Man how can he be so cute and so genius at the same time
General Linux License?
I have no idea what any of this is.
I got an ad for Xtra-PC
thanks now I'm never gonna use GPL3
HERO!
Linus
GPL has become a tool of the corporation.
In what meaningful way?
And so what? As long as many corporations have to share the source code with each other being bound by GPL-license, it's fine
I remember I disagreed with this on first viewing, and then I read about Richard Stallman.
Almost a decade later, and still I have to wonder if people who reference this excerpt, to further an anti-copyleft agenda, ever listened to it.
Tivoization wasn't in the user's interest. Someday, I hope, "OSHW" will win out and stuff like proprietary IP cores will be a thing of the past, and FPGAs and whatever technology that follows it can move as freely and ethically as software does in this era of Linux. It's happening, ever so slowly, but it took Linux 15 years to take over the world. We are only now seeing the first fully FLOSS FPGA toolchains, and the first replacements for IP cores.
I'm a user so I appreciate GPLv3. Personally, I'd like it if free software existed per the FSF's vision. But I'm not a developer so I have no frame of reference for why developers hate GPLv3 so much.
@canoshizrocks
Well, here's one data point for you, of a developer who supports the GPLv3, and the Affero license.
Linus, in this clip, states plainly the beef with the license becoming the "new GPL": that he liked that the kernel could be used in devices for which there was no reasonable way to extract the running code. Like a TiVo box, or today a Roku TV (or any appliance.) It's an opinion. You could say that this sort of thing violates the principle of downstream (you) having the same rights as upstream, but technically every smart TV seller can put a link to the kernel sources in the manual and say they comply with GPLv2.
Unfortunately, this is where the "developer hate" meme comes from; that corporations will search for, and remove, GPLv3 code destined for closed devices; or even if it isn't destined, just because their lawyers don't understand FLOSS.
I'm sure another developer can respond and say I'm wrong, but there's no official census. I know personally many authors who choose the GPLv3 and that link to it, and I see many, many GPLv3 works in use.
My original comment was to say that a lot of GPLv3 hate is just general copyleft hate from permissive license users, and citing Linus from this clip is disingenuous, because he had a specific beef and wouldn't be allied with those quoting it in the context of anti-copyleft (Torvalds and all the system bosses have been unwavering in their support for copyleft, he picked a copyleft license for the kernel and git very deliberately.)
I do think the world would be better if I could inspect and alter my car's software without an unreasonable amount of work, but I think we landed in an okay position having the kernel stay GPLv2. It would have been much worse if anti-Tivoization language had died altogether. And while I think that the draw of having the best software, maintained by the world, and just not wasting money would have forced manufacturers to comply, I very well could be wrong, and there's things like regulated industry (phones, medical, radio) that I don't have a ready answer for. So we have two licenses, which I think is the bargain that Torvalds wanted.
@@scottdrake5159 Thank you for the reply
❤️
Dude is wearing a Lowe's shirt
😂😂😂
I don't agree with Linus on this one (one more thing you could say), Tivo didn't do something legally wrong, but using something that is intended by its licence to be studied modified and redistributed freely and puting it in a locker is definitely not what gplv2 stood for.
But it's not in a locker at all. You just can't run modified versions on the hardware they created. You absolutely CAN run it on some other device, or use pieces of the source code for whatever other purpose, under GPLv2.
@@Mike-iz9kh Which means you are not free to modify your device.
That's entirely the question of opinions. For FSF, what Tivo did was illegal, they just forgot to include the relevant clause into GPL2. For Linus, this was perfectly fine. So, why would you believe that FSF has more rights than the creator of a product licensed under one of FSF licenses?
@@erikprantare696 but that's precisely what Linus is saying: he doesn't care about the device, he just cares about the source code.
@@Spongman And I think he should care about the device, or else you are in effect restricted from excercising your freedoms. If I have bought the computing device, I should be free to modify the software it is running so it does what I wish.
He looks like Tom Scott lmao
Funny that he knows so well what the GPL stands for, he knows it even better than those that created it!
Wrong.
@@powerfulaura5166 What a compelling argument! Next time try actually saying something.
Buy only GPL V3 Products, then.
Where exactly does he loose code in GPLv3?
Why does it violate everything GPLv2 stood for?
Joshua Allen what you mean?
What does it mean to rescinded code? Sry I'm not a native speaker and I do not have so much knowledge about this topic. Do you mean you can loose code under GPLv2 but not under GPLv3? I think Linus is saying it the other way around... He said he gives somebody code and with GPLv3 they can somehow avoid giving him changes back...
Joshua Allen in which license v2 or v3?
Joshua Allen are you sure? Has thia ever happaned? Just because something is not explicitly stated does not mean that it is allowed...
Linus was complaining that he does not get code back in v3,because there are exploits.is this true?
I had the same intuition. All version of my Forth 's (ciforth lina wina xina) are under gpl2.
So basically Red Hat today is doing the exactly the opposite : it uses Linux but if you don't pay you can't receive back